


Marshmallow World

by agoodwoman



Series: Holiday Cheer [1]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-01 19:59:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 76,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2785838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agoodwoman/pseuds/agoodwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christmas challenge from 2014, edited and updated to be completed.</p><p>It is set around Season 6, our beloved agents are working under AD Kersh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Christmas Carols

**Wednesday, December 2nd:  
** **FBI J Edgar Hoover Building**

 

As of December 1st, all of Washington became alive with Christmas fever. The sickness extended into the shopping centres, grocery stores, and to professional office buildings. It had become impossible to visit a grocery store, parking garage or gas station without hearing a holiday themed music. The Hoover building was not immune. Thanksgiving had come and gone. Agents who did not have active cases took long weekends and joked about the one perk to government work was the all of the mandatory holidays they were able to take.  
  
The FBI secretarial pool had decorated every nook and cranny with tinsel. Whether it was the string of gold and cranberry red beads or the metallic silver and green strings, every office door, every elevator looked like Christmas had vomited all over it.   
  
A giant Virginia Pine tree stood in the lobby and some of the directors and section chief's offices had their own smaller ones. The variety of white to evergreen, real to fake depended on the sense of humour of each director. A.D. Kersh had a small evergreen tree in the corner of his outer office with popcorn and cranberries on a string as well as small paper snowflakes and hand drawn gingerbread men. Nothing could have been more confusing to Mulder, who spent the entire morning after he saw the tree trying to profile their new boss.  
  
As Agent Dana Scully entered the parking garage and pulled her car into its usual spot next to Mulder's, she saw an empty space. He recently had made an effort to park within the lines and therefore, she didn't have to find an alternate spot elsewhere in the parkade or down the block. Two months ago she had finally snapped at him, calling him to move his vehicle so she could park next to him when all the usual spots were taken.   
  
"Mulder," he answered his desk phone on the first ring.  
  
"I need you to move your car," Scully stated. " _Now._ "   
  
"What-"   
  
Scully interrupted him, on full rant. "Mulder, it won't kill you to let me park in the spot next to you, the one they have yet to put my name on after six years in the basement. The one spot no one else wants. The one that is closer to the elevator than any of my alternate spots I usually find. It's been six long years of you occasionally 'allowing' me to use that spot. You know I want to park there. Move. Your. Car."   
  
"Scully, are you coming on to me?" he quipped back.  
  
"I don't hear keys jingling," Scully replied and hung up the phone, tossing it onto the passenger seat next to her.  
  
Three minutes later, Mulder had obviously run from the bullpen to the parkade, and hopped into his black sedan and maneuvered it into a more acceptable angle so Scully could pull in.  
  
When she exited her car, Mulder gave her his best chagrined look.   
  
"Can I carry your books for you?" Mulder said teasingly as he took her briefcase and the reference book she brought in for their report. "Make use of my muscle?"  


Depositing the book in his hands, she allowed him to do this one act of chivalry to appease his mind.  
  
His guilt knew no bounds. If she had said no, she would have spent the rest of the week with a sulking Mulder. That Mulder was more obnoxious than the inappropriate remarks, personal space invader, sexual innuendo and noisy Mulder.  
  
Since that day, he had left her ample room but she refused to mention it. Unlike the other aggravating things in their relationship she mentioned to him that would change for a short time then go back to its usual status quo, this one seemed to stick. A parking spot was such a small part of her day but he seemed to actually understand that it was the least he could do.  
  
A few years ago, she had expressed her desire to have a desk. He felt guilty about it and allowed her the use of his, especially during her cancer. Then, when she was in remission, he reverted back to claiming the furniture for his own.  
  
Once, she had complained that there was never any good coffee at the office and he stocked the basement with Hazelnut Vanilla Roast for three months. Then Diana had come around, they were removed from the X-Files and the disappointing coffee was back. Scully understood he would have been too embarrassed to bring special beans to the bullpen just for her. As much as he showed affection and was territorial of her, doing something as sweet as specialized coffee would have been too overt for Fox Mulder. He could try to be a mystery to everyone but she knew him very well. 

 

Scully turned off her car and looked at the empty space next to hers. She had come accustomed to arriving before Mulder when the X-Files was his life, but since the recent 'demotion' to the bullpen, under Kersh's thumb, she arrives at the same time or within minutes of him.

 

Work was still his life. He didn’t have many outside projects apart from spending time with The Lone Gunmen, basketball or baseball and looking into unexplained phenomenon. The cases reported to the FBI and disregarded by Diana Fowley and Jeffrey Spender were dug out of the trash and investigated by him, on his own dime, on the weekends. Obviously, Mulder expected Scully to go out on these excursions with him, even though they were no longer officially assigned to the X-Files. Of course, she did because since the review into their partnership, the closure of the office and working under A.D. Kersh, she felt more determined than ever to get back what was taken from her.

 

As she walked towards the outer doors of the FBI parkade, she heard someone whistle at her. She kept walking. The whistle persisted and she turned around, eyebrow arched, ready to throw an insult or withering stare at someone with poor manners and distaste.

 

Mulder smiled at her as he jogged towards her, his long dark coat bundled tightly around him and his hair still wet from his shower.

 

"Was that you?" she asked as she looked around the cement enclosure.  
  
Mulder put his hand on her lower back and started to usher her to move. "Me? My mother taught me better manners than that."  
  
He reached to open the door and she looked up at him, giving him her half amused, half unamused smile that she threw his way so often.  
  
"Did she?" Scully quipped. "That's funny, I remember someone making innuendo about my likeness to a working girl we saw outside the diner we ate lunch at two weeks ago."   
  
A very high-end call girl approached their table to borrow their sugar and when they looked up from the newspaper they were sharing, Mulder's jaw dropped. He swore that she could have been Scully's twin except for the lack of mole she covered up and the different size chest. Same height and weight, same fiery red hair. Although the woman styled hers with a bit more flare, they could have been twins.  
  
Mulder watched as she handed Scully her card when she returned the sugar and winked at her, completely ignoring Mulder. "I think we could have some fun, sweetheart."  
  
Scully had a pink flush about her for the rest of the day. First, to be hit on by another woman, and then to be hit on in front of Mulder. Meanwhile, Mulder couldn't stand up for ten whole minutes.  
  
Back in the parking garage, Mulder looked obviously nervous at the recollection of the event.   
  
"That was supposed to be a compliment," he muttered and Scully wondered what kind of endorsement that was.  
  
"Right," she quipped.  
  
"I'm holding the door, aren't I?" He pointed out as he gave her his full on teeth bearing grin. "Did you ever give that woman a call, by the way?"  
  
"Keep it up, Mulder, and I'll-"  
  
"Hey you never did follow through with your Jersey Devil, beast woman threat." Mulder pointed out and pressed the button for the elevator.  
  
“I shot you, didn’t I?” she reminded him.  
  
Three more agents joined them in the cool vestibule and their conversation stopped as per usual when around prying ears.  
  
Two of the agents Scully recognized from last year's blood drive. Since her cancer, she had not been allowed to donate but they asked her to work the booth for the day to monitor donors who felt faint and hand out cookies and juice. The FBI certainly got a discount on a doctor when Scully was around. Never let it be said that the government didn’t know how to pinch a penny when they could.

"You must be Agent Dana Scully," a male voice spoke up and they turned around to see a tall, handsome blonde smiling at them.

The elevator dinged and a small crowd stepped onto the car. The two agents Scully knew did not make eye contact with Mulder or the mystery agent and had the decency to keep their backs to them. Mulder, the mystery man and the interlopers pressed their corresponding buttons.

"Agent and Doctor Scully?" The blonde nightmare repeated.

"Yes." Scully answered.

"I'm Jerrod Brinkley," he extended his gloved hand to Scully, who shook it with her own, covered in leather.

Christmas carols in the form of Muzak played lightly over the decorated car and Jerrod smiled down at her.

"Nice to meet you," she said. "This is my partner, Agent Mulder."

Mulder and Jerrod Brinkley shook hands and tight smiles before Jerrod turned his eyes back to Scully. "Will you be helping us with the blood drive this year?"

"I haven't been asked yet," Scully replied, glancing up at Mulder. "I will, if I'm asked to."

"First, do no harm. Second, monitor the lightheaded with low blood sugar?" Jerrod quipped with a grin.

Scully smiled and she saw Mulder's eyebrows shot up. 

"Something like that," Scully replied and tried to dampen her humour by pressing her lips together.

"I'm the one organizing it this year. If you could help us out _Doctor_ that would be great." Jerrod placed an emphasis on the word 'doctor' that made Mulder made an obvious face about.

"You can call me Dana," Scully informed him with a slight smile.

That smile had usually been reserved for Mulder up until she had met Diana. The expression on Mulder's face was obvious of panic and worry that wouldn't be detectable to anyone but her. She ignored it anyway. 

"Dana, call me Jerrod," he replied, looking pretty proud of himself. "I just transferred here from San Diego."

"I grew up there, myself," Scully offered. "How are you liking your first winter on the East Coast?"

“It’s cold!” he said and they laughed.

The car dinged as it reached the sixth floor and Jerrod started to exit. 

"I'm on the ninth floor, in the bullpen. You can find me there," Scully called after him.

"Thanks!" he said and the doors closed on his handsome face.

Scully was staring down at her left thumb as she held it in her right hand. 

"Scully?" Mulder started and she looked up at him, innocently. The other two agents were staring at her as well. "Are you..."

The eighth floor dinged and Scully started to move.

"Next floor," Mulder said and grabbed her elbow, pulling her back towards him.

Agents Gillman and Pruist exited and took off down the hallway. Possibly to report to the masses that someone had finally successfully made a move on Spooky Mulder's lady friend and the Ice Queen didn't seem to mind.

Mulder watched Scully carefully for the duration of the morning, which was not an easy feat since his computer faced away from hers. She did not let on anything about the exchange. He had to maintain a sideways posture while on the phone, making background check phone calls and entering data while simultaneously watching her type useless summations into their WP4 program.

Christmas carols played quietly from a stereo on the filing cabinets on the west wall and Mulder could hear Scully humming along. Scully was humming. Slightly off key and quiet enough that only Mulder could hear her.

"Hey Scully, do you want to grab some lunch?" Mulder asked as she typed at her impressive eighty words per minute.

"Hmm?" Scully tore her eyes away from her screen and glanced over at her partner, who had rolled up his white shirt sleeves and loosened his grey tie. Last year that look would have made her heart flutter.

"Lunch?" He repeated. "My treat and not just the hot dog vendor a block over?"

Her eyes darted back to her computer screen. "Sure."

Mulder stood and picked up his discarded suit jacket off the back of his chair. "Sushi?"

He watched her lock down her computer and grab her handbag from her bottom desk drawer. "Sure, Mulder. Whatever you want."

"Really?" he replied with a leer.

Scully glanced up at him and ran her strawberry tongue across her top lip. He made a face that she was doing that mindless action to torture him. He might not think she could see the change in his eyes but every panic or flash of desire was written across his face more clearly than the obtuse statements he would make about their relationship.

"Sushi is fine."

Mulder walked over to the doorway of the bullpen and picked up their jackets. "After you, Mrs. Spooky."


	2. Wish Lists and Other Things

The noisy Japanese restaurant bustled around them with the fragrant smells of teriyaki mixed with soy sauce, vegetables frying and the underlying scent of fish. They had managed to snag one of the last booths at the busy downtown spot and, as per usual on a Wednesday, it was filled with other government and business employees. 

"Do you want the last gyoza, Scully?" Mulder offered as he pointed his chopsticks at the rectangular dish that had edamame beans and peppers still littering the plate. 

Scully shook her head and leaned against the wall of the booth. She moved her hand across her stomach, smiling at Mulder. "This was a good idea."

She had been scribbling on a notepad while they waited for their food and Mulder was practicing using his chopsticks. Due to a period of her childhood spent in Japan, Scully was quite dexterous with chopsticks whereas her partner was not and had yet to accept any instruction. On Martha's Vineyard, he had explained, they were taught how to waltz and fox trot - where the irony wasn’t lost on him- and which fork was appropriate. Scully laughed and offered to ask for one. 

The bonus for his embarrassment was he got her to laugh.

"I'm glad I can get you to eat anything besides that bee pollen crap you've been trying lately," he replied and shoved the remaining dumpling in his mouth, leaving a smear of sauce across his lips.  
   
Her eyes watched as he licked them slowly.

"Bee pollen in yogurt is a super food and it's high in protein," she replied, sitting up straighter. "And I-"

"I know,  _I kno_ w." Mulder interrupted. "You  _think_ you need to lose five pounds."

For a pair of people who weren't a couple, sometimes their arguments were very much like that of one.  
   
"I saw the goods, Scully. Remember? I don't know where you'd lose it from."

Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped open slightly. "Mulder."

Mulder smiled and chewed on the straw that came with his ice tea. "I did. You were covered in green goo, but the goods looked-"

"Mulder," she warned, holding up her hand.  
   
Of the things he appreciated about his relationship with her, the communication with looks and pitch in names could say so much more than anything else. He had never told her, but it was far deeper than anything he had with any of his past romantic entanglements.  
   
As much as he didn't know her body intimately, he knew her mind and she his. Not that he was opposed to the other part of that relationship. In the summer, before the bee stung her, he felt an amazing amount of passion and he had wanted to express it, finally, in a physical way. He felt like she finally wanted him to.

"What?" It was his turn to smile at her innocently and lean back against the back of the booth. "It was frozen. It was Antarctica but I looked. I'm a man you know. It's a basic biological impulse. If I have another chance, I can't promise not to look again."

Perhaps reminding Scully that he was a man would remind her also that he saw her as a woman.  

Her mind couldn't think of a clear response. "You..."

"I looked. There. I said it. I saw you naked and you have... great assets." He grinned and then quickly looked down at his empty plate. 

"Assets?" Scully repeated.

"Yeah," Mulder was still looking down at the pattern in the sauce that he had drawn when their dynamite roll arrived. "I respect the crap out of you Scully but don't forget I am a man."  
   
"That's the second time you've said that," Scully said quietly. 

At that moment, Scully looked so clearly to want to be someplace else. It was a public setting of a noisy sushi bar that lacked intimacy. He saw her watching his broad shoulders heave and he wiped his hand across his mouth. 

When his eyes met hers again, he was dead serious. "Don't worry about your figure."

Scully tucked her chin towards her neck, a sign to Mulder she was considering his weight of his entire statement. It was one of the first times Mulder mentioned he saw her naked. This was something they had both skirted around for months since returning to the bullpen after their trip around the world. Secondly, he was telling her he liked the way she looked. He knew it was a big step for both of them and she was obviously flustered at the confession.

"You're the smartest person I know, but I get that you're still a woman. It's just, all this obsessive behaviour seems so silly..." Mulder shook his head as to say 'I don't know.'

"It, uh... I told myself after my cancer I wouldn't let it bother me," Scully replied. "It's just we aren't in the field so we sit a lot more. I didn't realize all that diner food was actually good for my waistline."

"Maybe it was all the alien bounty hunters and moth men we chased through forests," Mulder quipped as the waitress brought the cheque, setting it closer to him.  
He scooped it up before she could protest and put his credit card on the miniature black tray that had worn out gold lettering. He could almost read American Express but it looks more like mer an pres.  
   
The young woman took his card to charge it and smiled at Mulder one last time, hoping to remind her of the tip portion of the transaction.

Scully made a few more notes on her pad of paper and tore off the two sheets she had been going back and forth on.

"What is that?" Mulder asked as he jutted his chin towards her pad.

"It's silly," she said as she glanced around the restaurant. Her shoes were on the other side of the booth seat and he was watching her calculate trying to get out of the booth in her fitted skirt.  

Mulder slid around the booth to her side, so he was now perpendicular to her, instead of across the bench seats. "Sillier than bee pollen?"

"I thought we were talking about other things now," she said and looked around again for their waitress.

"Okay, what's on the paper?" he insisted. 

The waitress arrived with his card and he filled it out, leaving her a generous tip for their forty-five dollar lunch. 

As he tucked his card back in his wallet, he said, "You know, sushi is supposed to be cheap but the way we order, I think it's more expensive than half of the other meals we eat."

"The last nice restaurant we were in was on that surveillance detail we were stuck with in July and neither of us got to eat at a table or order off the menu," she reminded him.

They had spent three days in the over air-conditioned back office of an Italian restaurant in D.C. watching video tapes of the bartender as they tried to trace a shipment of drugs. It was right before Dallas but after the office burned down. Mulder still remembers bringing her soup after their last day because Scully had caught a cold.

Instead of commenting on the lack of nice meals they've shared, he slid around the booth to put his shoes back on. He held his hand out to help her and she looked around to see how she would maneuver such a trick. So, she pulled her legs up to the side and tucked them underneath her bottom, then standing on the bench, she took Mulder's hand and used him as a shield to step down into her shoes.

"Tricky," he commented as he watched her slide her stocking-clad feet into her chunky three inch black pumps.

As reward for their lunch or maybe just because he was being so attentive, she handed him the two small sheets of lined note paper. In legible but flowy Scully-handwriting was a Christmas wish list.

Mulder perused the list and handed it back to her. His eidetic memory committing the items to his mind. The traditional hand went to her back as he led her to the door. "Are you giving that to Santa?"

"When we were kids, we used to all make a wish list and my parents would choose three items from it," she told him as they exited onto the damp street.

The sensible shoes and pant suit would have been more appropriate for the weather they were having but Mulder was grateful for her pencil skirts and chunky heels. He looked down at her feet again and pulled her by the elbow towards the curb, holding his arm up to hail a cab.  
"Did you usually get what you wanted?"

A shrug turned into a shiver and his large hands moved up and down her biceps to warm her up. A cab appeared and they climbed in.

"Hoover building please," Scully requested and the cabby nodded. 

"So?" Mulder prompted.

"Well, growing up Catholic we didn't believe in Santa because Christmas was really about the birth of Christ. So the present-picking was a way for my parents to fight against the cost of four kids being greedy during the holidays and still get us what we wanted," she explained. "I learned not to make my list too big so I could ensure I could get what I really wanted."

"Hotel California?" he guessed.

Her faced registered something between confusion and shock. "Never got that one," she said. "I still make the list and then my brothers and I give them to my mother. It's silly and she hasn't shopped from the list in a long time so usually I put on intangible things. What about you?"

Mulder pulled out a sunflower seed from his pocket and studied it. "Well we wrote letters to 'Santa' until my sister was 7. After she disappeared, my dad would hand me a catalog and tell me to circle items."

"Oh," she sort of pouted her lower lip at him and furrowed her eyebrows. "Do you... Do you still do that?"

Mulder shook his head with a sly smile. "The catalog material-"

"Why don't I stop you right there?" Scully interrupted and shook her head. To his delight, there was a small smile playing on her lips.

The cabby pulled up in front of the Hoover building and popped the stopper on the meter. "Thirteen eighty-four."

Mulder handed him a twenty and climbed out of the cab. 

In the elevator back to the ninth floor, they were lucky enough to have the lift to themselves. 

"Maybe you should make a list," she suggested.

"Well, if I sent my mother a list, she would probably ignore it and send me a sweater or a scarf," he replied.

"Last year she sent you those monogrammed shirts," Scully reminded him.

The elevator doors opened on the sixth floor and their new friend Jerrod Brinkley joined them. 

"Agent Doctor Dana Scully," he said with a smile. "Agent Mulder."

"Hi," they said in unison. 

"What floor?" Scully asked, standing closest to the button fixture.

"I was actually coming up to see you," he replied sheepishly and ran a hand through his thick blonde locks. 

Mulder wondered how he got away with his hair being as long as it was. 

"What can I do for you Agent?" Scully asked.

"Jerrod," he corrected her.

A slight flush took over her cheeks and a pink tongue darted out to her top lip. "Okay, Jerrod, what can I do for you?"

Mulder’s jaw clenched as he watched the exchange and he suddenly felt small for such a tall man. It was strange how he could observe her interacting with another man and it would make him more than a little jealous. Not that he was willing to admit that.

"I had some questions about last year's blood drive," he replied as his eyes glanced over at Mulder.

"I'm afraid I won't be much help on the details," Scully replied. "I was asked at the last minute to assist the American Red Cross nurses when the first donor fainted."

"That was lucky," Brinkley replied with a smile.

The elevator car came to a stop and the doors stalled to open.

Mulder and Scully both noticed that the car had ceased to move.

"Mulder?" Scully asked.

"I know," he replied and sighed heavily. 

Mulder had told her once on a stake out that he believed every time someone uttered the word 'lucky' something unlucky happened to someone else. He called it cosmic balancing. Scully argued cause and effect with him for another hour and it was possibly one of his favourite conversations they had ever had. 

The emergency phone rang and Scully answered it.  "Hello? Yes, this is Agent Scully. I'm in here with Agent Mulder and Agent Brinkley."  
   
The men watched as she nodded her head.  
   
"We're between the sixth and ninth floor."  
   
More nodding and Mulder wanted to point out that they couldn't see her.  
   
"Okay, I understand."

"Scully?"

"Someone is on their way," she said and looked from Mulder to Brinkley. 

The only thing that could make this experience better would be if Diana Fowley appeared in the elevator and started calling him 'Fox.' Nothing made Scully chillier towards him than when that woman showed up. Since she was assigned to work with Spender on the X-Files, Scully's tolerance for her went from an obvious annoyance to outward hostility. If Diana did suddenly appear, Mulder could gloat that the sudden conjuring of an individual was actually possible and he could cross it off of his 'things I want Scully to believe in.' 

Mulder stifled a laugh and caught them looking at him questioningly. 

"Just thinking about if we could bilocate a repair man to come and get the elevator moving," Mulder lied. 

"If you grab one of the doors and I grab the other, we might be able to open them far enough for us to get out," Brinkley suggested.

"Do you know the statistics of the number of people bisected from climbing out of stuck elevators?" Mulder asked.

Scully's face started to flush again and he wondered if she was feeling warm from Brinkley's presence or if he was merely embarrassing her in front of her new friend. 

"Do you?" Agent Brinkley asked.

Scully held up her hand to stop Mulder from a full on rant. "He probably does know and I would advise you not to encourage him."

"Are you some sort of an expert on supernatural phenomenon?" Brinkley asked. "Hobby of yours?"

Mulder and Scully looked at one another for longer than a beat necessary until Mulder smiled at Brinkley. "I know a bit."

"I ran into Agent Fowley last week and she was asking me about fog occurrences in San Diego," Brinkley replied. "She said it had something to do with a case in Ohio. Anyway, she's a lot like you."

"You'd be surprised how that can get old," Mulder muttered, looking down at his shoes.  
   
The doors began moving again, closing. The car jostled and Mulder's arm quickly reached out to pull Scully to him in an attempt to prevent her from falling. Her knees buckled at the sudden movement and a strong arm was looped around her waist. He pulled her body flush to his as though he was going to kiss her.  
   
Of all the places he had imagined it, he never pictured an audience for them like the poster boy for California tans like Agent Jerrod Brinkley. The way things had gone between them lately, he was certain she would slug him like her 1939 counterpart. Saying I love you after causing a load of trouble for his partner and coworkers didn't melt Scully's iciness towards him completely. 

The doors opened and a crowd of agents and repair men were standing there as Mulder held Scully to him and Agent Brinkley stood there watching in fascination.

"There's no mistletoe in this elevator car, you know," one of the agents from the bullpen said from the middle of the crowd and a few of them laughed.  
  
Mulder noted the romantic pose in which he was holding her and his eyes flittered down to look at Scully’s mouth.

Scully pushed her hands on Mulder's chest and they stepped apart. Her face was fully flushed now and she maneuvered her way through the crowd, back to the restrooms.

"Probably want to come back tomorrow, if you can," Mulder said to Agent Brinkley with a boyish smile as he tucked his hands in his pockets. "Nice seeing you."


	3. Mistletoe

  
**Thursday, December 3rd**  
**Margaret Scully's house  
Bethesda, Maryland**

  
The snow crunched under Mulder's boots as he surveyed his handiwork. The air in Bethesda was dry and cool, however not unpleasant for the job he undertook. In a twisted turn of events, Mulder and Scully had arrived at her mother's residence for supper and Mulder offered to shovel the driveway and sidewalk. One might think he was the type of man who shied away from manual labour, since he first chose a path in academia then law enforcement, but nothing could outweigh his chivalrous nature and he was not about to watch either of the Scully women shovel snow.

A snow plough had recently been by and it blocked in many of the driveways. As dinners simmered inside grand kitchens, residents of the neighbourhood went to work clearing the recent snowfall and offending blockade to their properties. As he observed this, Mulder parked the car down the block, handed Scully the keys and told her he would take care of it.

If she hadn't been so cold, she would have stood on the sidewalk of Pineberry Lane dumbstruck at the offer.

Margaret Scully had called to him as he was finishing that there was hot chocolate and baked goods waiting when he came inside, but that didn't seem to motivate him to move faster. Lost in thought, he kept replaying the events from earlier in the week.

  
Scully had been particularly wary of him since Tuesday at lunch and he assumed it was because she was embarrassed to be manhandled in front of California boy, Jerrod Brinkley. Or was she still contemplating his lunchtime statement? He could ask her but that would be too emotionally developed for them.

He had felt uncomfortable after his declaration at lunch and her lack of response. Naturally, Scully liked to process all information before she decided how she felt but Mulder was hoping for something more reactive. This is who they were, hindered in ways of their own hearts.  


Wednesday as he was returning from lunch alone, he saw Scully hand over her personal phone number to Agent good-looks-blonde-wavy-California-hair-Brinkley. Mulder asked her about it but she brushed it off, saying he wanted to talk about the blood drive. Mulder wasn’t buying it. He could smell a poor excuse for wanting to spend time with Scully from a mile away.   


He should know - he was full of them.   


Instead of sulking, he had nodded quietly and spent the rest of the day buried in their scutwork. In between phone calls, he browsed a few sites online to find the best place to purchase one of the items on Scully's wishlist. If he got her at least one thing on her list, that might make up for some of the crappy ways in which he treated her last year.

Not to mention, the previous Christmas she lost a child she never knew she had. That, along with the admission he had known about some of what was happening to the taken ova, had made her pull away just when he thought she was opening the door to a romance. Raining sleeping bags commentary and dancing to Cher, there were some looks and signals from her that she liked him as more than a friend.

In a lot of ways, their relationship was still the same as when they were in the basement but it had shifted as well. Instead of their office being a place of refuge, they were out on display in a bullpen. Diana reemerging had thrown a big wrench into the direction their relationship was headed but then they were loaned out to every task force that would take them and things seemed to be okay. Seemed being the operative word because he had never trusted Scully any less but she had felt like he had trusted his former partner more. 

The almost kiss brought everything up to the surface. When they encountered the new agents on the X-Files, Spender and Fowley, it could not have been more of a slap in the face that there were big holes in their relationship. How their communication faltered was now blindingly clear to them.  
  
Mulder couldn’t bring himself to tell Scully why he hadn’t told her about Diana and what she apparently meant to him at the time. Scully’s obvious distrust to Diana had created a situation he wasn’t able to navigate through without telling her how he felt.  
After he did tell her everything, he tried to kiss her. Properly and with intent of making her stay, because if it wasn’t the work then maybe he was enough to keep her in the FBI until they had the X-Files back. He was ready to have it all with her if he couldn’t have the X-Files and she seemed to be willing to let him. Until they got back to D.C. and she showed the FBI a report that discounted everything they had just seen. It was a slap to the face.  
  
Mulder grunted as he continued to shovel Maggie’s walkway and decided it looked decent. There was no more hiding.

When he came in from the cold, he had shaken off his boots on the porch and laid them quietly on the shoe rack over the top of the heating vent. His gloves joined them and he hung his wool coat on the hook above the vent. Coats had been moved to the side so his things could be warmed and Mulder wondered if the thoughtful gesture was from Scully or Maggie. 

As he rounded the corner to where Scully was inside the kitchen with her mother, he stopped just at the swinging door. He spotted her at the kitchen table with hot tea. He could see her tearing at the corner of a festive Christmas napkin that held a small brownie. Mulder assumed that the sweet treat was to get her mother off her back as long as the portion was as small as possible.

"Who was that?" Margaret Scully asked as Scully set her ringing phone back down on the table.

"Jerrod Brinkley. He's a recent transfer from San Diego. He's called me three times since yesterday," Scully said and Mulder stopped in his tracks. "I told him already I would help with the blood drive."

Maggie said with a sigh. "Honestly Dana, for all the time you spend with Fox, you would think you would know how to talk to a man." 

"What's that supposed to mean?" Scully asked almost defensively. He could hear spoons clinking against porcelain mugs. "And Mulder is a whole different story, Mom and you know that."  

Knowing better than to push further on a topic that had already been prodded to death, Maggie moved on to other topics.

"Fox should be done with the driveway by now, don't you think?"

"I'm sure he's just moving our car," Scully replied quietly.

Mulder took that moment to realize he handed her the car keys on the street and quickly donned his outside gear at the front door to call for the keys. "Hey Scully, I'm all done. Can you grab the keys?"

Mulder's cheeks were raw from the cool air and he was glad he had the presence of mind to blow his nose before he removed his jacket. Scully popped her head out of the kitchen and took in the sight of Mulder, half bundled and looking chilled. 

Scully held out the keys to toss them and Margaret clucked her tongue in disapproval, with a nudge to her daughter to walk them over to him before she disappeared back into the kitchen. 

Sometimes the tomboy of Scully's childhood shone through when she was relaxed. To that end, Mulder had experienced her wicked aim. Latex gloves, rubber bands, wadded up paper cups and keys had all a way of soaring perfectly to where she wanted them to land, usually at his head.  
   
Certain that Mrs Scully knew her daughter's ability to toss a pair of keys successfully and the way she smirked at him when she nudged Dana, Mulder looked up.   
   
There, plain for them to all to see and attached to the light fixture, was a rounded leaf bundle with white and deep red berries. 

Mulder cleared his throat and looked up again. Scully followed his eyes and then looked in disbelief to the kitchen. Her skin flushed as red as the berries and Mulder wore his panic face. He felt like he was starting to sweat in his thick coat and gloves. 

"You don't-" Scully started to talk him out of it.

Which is exactly the moment Mulder pulled her to him by her upper arms and kissed her firmly on the lips. His top lip was flush against hers but his bottom lip was well underneath. Fingers clenched at his dark pea coat and his left arm moved deftly to her lower back, splaying his hand widely against the soft cashmere of her sweater.

Knowing he had the excuse of a Christmas tradition, Scully seemed compelled to follow but beyond that was his own desire and he deepened the kiss.  

Feeling her tongue pushing against his lips, he opened his mouth and felt the electricity of six years of unbridled passion. His tongue slid past her teeth and massaged hers. A sigh escaped her lips, her fingers threaded into his hair. 

By the time Mulder realized this was entirely too enjoyable and their location, he pulled away. He took the keys and looked over his shoulder to see her left dazed in the front entryway.  
 

*******  
   
When Mulder came back into the house, Scully was staring into her mug of earl grey tea and her brownie was mysteriously gone. The dining room table was set for them to enjoy their supper with boxes stacked at one end and large rolls of wrapping paper piled at the other. 

  
Of course, for someone like Margaret Scully, she would have started shopping and wrapping gifts by December 4th. If she had the shopping compulsion and organization of her daughter, Mulder imagined she was the first in line at Black Friday sales events. 

The rest of the house was decorated for the holiday season, minus the tree that normally sat by the window of the living room. The Scully's were diehard traditionalists and had fresh spruce trees, hand picked and erected by the second week of December, fastidiously watering them to ensure their life indoors lasted until the New Year. 

A box labelled "Ornaments" sat on the couch and Mulder pictured family heirloom and handmade trinkets, each one wrapped with care. He was hoping to be invited over when the ladies decorated Mrs. Scully's tree, just to see more of Scully's childhood handiwork.

Taking the seat on the nook next to Scully, he waited obediently for Maggie to serve him his promised hot chocolate and brownie of his own. 

"Thanks, Mrs. Scully," he said, glancing over at his partner.  He took a generous bite of his brownie and couldn't help a moan that escaped his mouth. "Wow."

"It has ground coffee and hazelnut butter," Scully chimed in.

"Scully, did you bake this?" Mulder asked, a grin expanding across his whole face and she nodded slightly. "And you didn't let me come watch?"

"Dinner will be ready in ten minutes," Maggie said, ignoring the exchange between the two.

Mulder took a healthy bite of the brownie and stood up. "Uhm-gerrrn-whuf-merrr-hamf."  
   
Maggie gave Scully a questioning look. 

"He's going to wash his hands," Scully explained and stood up also. "I should too."

Scully waited outside the bathroom door for Mulder. He had left the door partially open and he was splashing water across his face. Gently, she knocked on the door and he opened it further with his foot.

"So," she prompted.

Mulder dried his hands and face, carefully arranging the towels back in a respectable state. "So."

"That was..."

"Sorry, Scully," he interrupted. "I think I've hung around you too long. I got carried away with a silly tradition."

"I was going to say nice," she replied as she slowly looked up towards his face and watched it transform from nonchalance to happiness. "Don't you think?"

"Probably long overdue," he said, his lips tight against his teeth in a grin. "You thought it was nice?"

"We don't have to dissect it but for first kisses, it was..." Scully ran her tongue across her top lip. "Great."

Mulder pulled her to him and closed the door gently behind her. 

"We are at my _mother's_ ," she reminded him with an eyebrow raised but a smile playing on her mouth.

Mulder pressed her up against the door with his body, his arms on either side of her head. Then, with a smirk, his stance widened, making them more at eye level and he kissed her fully on the mouth. 

A quiet gasp left her mouth as he claimed hers again, his lips feeling warmer already. Their mouths both tasted of the coffee and hazelnut brownie. Her nipples tightened under the silky cups of her cotton bra and he could feel them pressing into his chest through his own layers. Her fingernails dug into the soft wool of his sweater. This was one she had coincidentally picked out for him to wear last year at the mandatory mixer Skinner ensured that they attended and was wondering if she noticed the gesture.

Heads turned, changing angles and deepening the kiss and Mulder pressed his hardness into her.

"Oh!" Scully pulled her mouth away and closed her eyes. 

How long had it been since a man had done that? Mulder didn't want to give it much more thought to when she last felt a man appreciate the delectable femininity of her. She sighed as he kissed the sensitive span of her neck and he felt his five o'clock shadow scraping at her delicate ivory skin. His hands held her hair and he felt the urge to touch her everywhere.

"We should go eat," Scully whispered.

"Okay," he mumbled against her skin and nipped at the tendon she had exposed when she tilted her head. "You should probably stop doing that thing with your hips then."

Scully pushed on his chest and licked his saliva off her lips. "I'll meet you in the dining room."

She quickly fixed her tousled hair and pulled on her sweater, trying to look as though she wasn't just making out with her partner. He could still see her nipples through the layers of her bra and sweater so he was sure the jig was up. Mulder was left smiling in the bathroom knowing his body needed to cool down before joining her mother for dinner.


	4. Bundling for the Cold

  
**Friday, December 4th**  
**Empty apartment on Bleeker Street**  
**11:45 p.m.**  
   
   
Scully shivered next to Mulder and he pulled the wool blanket tighter around her small frame. 

Normally, jeans with long johns underneath, two pairs of socks under her warmest boots and three shirts would be more than enough under her down jacket, however, the sky cleared this evening and the D.C. area was hit with a cold snap. The temperature outside was well below freezing.

Mulder had on similar layers, also wearing a down parka, but was obviously feeling the cold less harshly than she was. He had yet to complain once about the dropped temperature when normally any papercut would be heard about for days. She wondered if he wasn’t cold or if he was distracted by yesterday's events.  
  
"Why did we get stuck on this detail?" she asked through chattering teeth.

"I think it was when we scoffed at Agent Pruist's reasoning for thinking our target, a thirty five-year-old English professor at the college, was the supplier for a drug ring."

"Does it make sense to you why we're watching Darren Hills?" She asked, turning her face from the monitors to watch Mulder.

Darren Wilson Hills, thirty-five-year-old English Professor at Howard University was their person of interest for the evening. Pruist, an agent from the Americas Criminal Enterprise Section was adamant that the man in question was dealing narcotics to students. While most investigations required tact, finesse and planning, this one seemed to be based on a theory and a sloppily written warrant. They had arrived at two p.m. for an eight-hour shift of watching his apartment and so far, they observed him grading papers, talking to his mother and writing on note pads.

Scully’s theory thus far, was that the drugs being dealt through Howard University were from someone other than Darren Hills and this was a waste of time. Dutifully, she kept notes regardless.

Mulder and Scully were assigned to watch him during his off-hours starting today and it had not been an enjoyable experience thus far. Two hours into their shift, the space heater that had kept the empty apartment at a cool to lukewarm temperature had sputtered and died. No amount of batteries and shaking on behalf of Mulder’s part had helped.

That and she had been contemplating, not one, but two kisses they had shared the day previous and had yet to repeat. Her mind wanted to focus on their menial job yet she was distracted by the way Mulder was licking the salt from his sunflower seeds off lips she had tasted just yesterday.

He looked over at her and shook his head. "Freezing my ass off for the last seven and a half hours hasn't convinced me any more of his guilt but I do think that this guy just needs to get laid."  
  
Scully raised an eyebrow. "Why's that?”

"He's had three phone calls from his mother on a Friday night. I might be a sorry loser but I don't get that many calls from my mom..." Mulder replied with a self-deprecating shake of his head. "Although maybe that says more about my relationship with my mother than it does about his."

"You're not a sorry loser," she mumbled and her body suddenly shivered noticeably again. " _God_ , I'm cold!"

"I'm going to call for them to bring us a new space heater," Mulder said and picked up his cell. "This has got to go against a labour law, even for the FBI."

Mulder got on the phone to their Special Agent In Charge they were loaned out to, SAC G Phillips on his private line. Even through Scully’s protest, his complaint about the standard of conditions for their stakeout was taken seriously. Thirty minutes later they were noticeably warmer in the apartment and were able to strip down a few layers.

With their jackets bundled underneath his head, Mulder had laid down on the cot on top of a blanket. His eyes still on the monitors but needing a more comfortable position than hunched over the small makeshift desk. She noted that a man like Mulder stretched out on surfaces like a cat took up space in any home, never asking if it was allowed or intrusive and always territorial.

From his place on the cot, she was aware he could openly study her and was doing just that as she tried to fastidiously write notes. A lot of her points made included the lack of movement they were witnessing and summarizing the last phone call their suspect had with his mother.

"You know it's incredible the kind of surveillance work the FBI has us doing now. If we had suggested last year we were looking into this guy because there was a suspicion he was a werewolf, getting a surveillance van or finding an empty apartment, let alone a six-man team to monitor him over a weekend during a full moon, would have been impossible," he said. "And yet, the heater goes out and one is slow to bring us a replacement. I bet if your pen died they would supply you a new laptop to record your notes."

Scully looked at him plainly, understanding the tangent his mind was drifting to. Their well-being might not be a current priority for the FBI and they understood that clearly. However, the operations the FBI approved of over the X-Files, including false drug charges, the money was happily spent.

"Efficient means of record taking are hardly a waste of the government's money, Mulder," Scully countered and picked up her cell phone that was vibrating on the desk. "Scully?" A pause. "No, Jerrod I'm on assignment." Scully glanced over to Mulder. "No problem. I'll talk to you Monday."

"Brian Wilson calling at this hour must be still trying to ask you out without asking you out?" Mulder teased and Scully tucked her chin, unsure of how to answer. " _He asked you out_?"

"You sound surprised." she said as she glanced back at him.

"I guess I was hoping he would have fallen down an elevator shaft or something by now," he muttered. He moved from his horizontal place on the cot, sat up on the edge and poked her in the thigh. "What did you say?"

"Um, I told him.... um, I wasn't free," she said lightly. 

"You weren't free as in you weren't free for the day he asked you or you weren't free as in you are seeing someone?" Mulder clarified as he leaned into her space.

Scully turned the chair to face him, crossed her arms and studied his face. Since the kisses at her mothers, he had kissed her good night in the car but that had more intent and just as much passion as their bathroom kiss. Tonight, he gave her a peck on the cheek when they were finally alone. ' _It didn't announce they were dating, let alone soul mates forever_ ,' she thought. 

She knew that was a lie she was telling herself and it was an attempt to protect her own heart from further pain. She was his for a long time as much as he was hers. Imagining her life without him in it was painful and not something she wanted for herself. However, knowing whether or not it would work for them on a romantic level, even though the few kisses they had shared were exciting and proved their compatibility on a primary sexual level, there were no statements of what their relationship was now. That would be too obvious for them.

"I told him I wasn't free," Scully repeated and drew her eyes to her knee, where Mulder was drawing small circles on her jeans. "I didn't want to get into it." 

His fingers inched higher from her knee to her thigh and a raised eyebrow momentarily stopped him. "You didn't want to _get into it_?"

" _No_ ," she replied curtly. 

The touch of his fingers through her clothing was teasing and the effect shot straight to her sex. Before she made use of the cot in the room she needed to get onto another topic.

"So if he asks me if you're seeing anyone?" Mulder countered. Scully made a face. "Guys ask me stuff about you."

"Women ask me about you," she countered.

"So what do I say when he asks me if you've got a boyfriend?" he persisted. 

"You know what I used to think would be a fun prank to play on Skinner?" Scully said, still watching as his fingers were now drawing delicate and teasing swirly patterns on her legs.   

"Don't change the- wait, what did you say?" Mulder was suddenly intrigued by this mischievous streak Scully was unexpectedly displaying.

"An office prank..." Scully replied lightly. "It's not that bad. It's kind of silly."  
   
"I like silly," Mulder coaxed and they smiled at one another. 

"I always wanted to decorate his actual office, really over the top crazy Christmas with dancing Santa's and his desk wrapped in Christmas paper," Scully described, her eyes flashing. "At this point, it might be more satisfying to do it to Kersh. I had been thinking about asking the Gunmen to help me loop the security footage. I know it's not what people would expect from me but the way things have been going lately..."

"Dana Scully, you little trickster!" he declared as he nudged her and they shared a laugh. "It would definitely be more satisfying to wrap his desk in wrapping paper. _And_ his assistant's desk."

"She likes you," Scully pointed out.

Mulder looked at her plainly. "She takes a hint as well as Jerrod the surfer dude Brinkley. Although, I thought my hints to her I wasn't biting at the bait she was dangling was pretty obvious."

"Apparently not," she said.

"So are you going to call him?" Mulder asked insistently.

A pink tongue swiped at her lips and she giggled. "Are you jealous?"

" _No_!" he cried and then hung his head. "Maybe."

"The way you were towards Diana..." Scully started. "I just thought you weren't, I mean that we weren't...."

"Scully we steamed up the windows in my car last night," he reminded her with a grin and she blushed. "I don't know... Why do you... I mean, Diana? Really?"

"Maybe we should decorate our old office instead," she mumbled. Scully's eyes flashed brightly at him as she tried to get back to the topic she wanted to discuss. " _Please_ , can we decorate our old office?"

Mulder’s face didn’t register a thought to why that would make any sense. "Why?"

"I always wanted to and you never really let me," Scully started suddenly sounding very excited. "I was given a key by accident by maintenance last week when they had the locks changed. We wouldn't be breaking in technically because I have a key... And... I know we won't be able to enjoy it but..."

Mulder grinned at her childlike enthusiasm. "Spender is probably going to think that it's an X-File. Although, I don't know if anything could get Jeffrey Spender believing in paranormal activity. It would have to bite him in the ass."

Scully raised an eyebrow. "You said the same thing to me in Nevada this summer."

"Well, I believe I asked you if it was going to have to bite you in the ass for you to believe in it," Mulder corrected her. 

"Luckily, there is a believer down there now," Scully said, bristling and turning away from Mulder, back to the screens.

”I told her that your science actually made me more credible,” Mulder told her and she hesitated to turn back around. “So while yes men can get you so far, you need people who make you work for it.”

Scully looked over her shoulder and saw that look in his eyes he had in his apartment hallway before that stupid bee. That look was a cavern of longing she could get lost in. Not now, Dana.

"His apartment has gone dark, he's in bed. I'm going to radio the relief team."

"Do you have decorations in mind?" Mulder asked her, in an attempt to get their conversation back to the jovial nature it had taken on before.

"I saw some really ugly wrapping paper at KMart when I was buying these socks," she murmured as she watched the screen and put the surveillance headphones back on. "The lights just came on again."

Making a note of the change in ambience in his apartment, Mulder went to the window and peered through the telescope trained on Hill’s front room.

"Can you hear anything?" Mulder asked. Her head shook slowly. "The side light is on, but I don't see any movement. They should have had us in the apartment above his."

"I think tomorrow we might be," Scully replied and wrote down all that she could see and hear. 

The thought of spending the weekend in an apartment doing surveillance for an assignment with no lustre wasn't exactly her cup of tea. She could think of thirteen other things she would rather be doing, make that fifteen things, with Mulder and to Mulder.  
   
She wanted to pick up where they left off in the car last night, her body pushed against the door and her cheeks flushed with arousal. He was rough and gentle with her body while the evidence of his want for her pressed into her thigh. In all her experiences of making out in a car, she had never enjoyed it so thoroughly. As he kissed her neck exactly where she wanted him to, she couldn’t help but sigh. His tongue glided against hers with a little bit of pressure as to truly taste her. In a moment of brazen want, she stroked him through his pants and allowed him to cup her breast under her jacket. It was blissful and wonderful before the sirens in her head rang and she abruptly stopped their evening. She pushed him away as she asked him to slow down. Mulder looked at her as though she was a contradiction even then and she couldn’t help herself. She was a scientist and the woman of faith. Someone whose sexuality would probably be overwhelming and knowing that, tampered it down with a professional bob and tight suits.

Since the kiss in his car last night, Mulder seemed more anxious to her but more relaxed than he had felt since they were put in the bullpen. She was relieved they had finally crossed that line but with Mulder, he could always step back, pull away and go back to how things were between them before.

The communication conference would have worked wonders for them if Mulder didn't find team building activities to be such a foolish exercise in bureaucratic posturing and a waste of time. 'See how well we work together? See how successful we are at word games?'

Kersh had mentioned sending them to the next one and to avoid it, Mulder told her he was hoping he could put in for a vacation time when the conference was taking place. He had mused he would have his appendix removed voluntarily. It was obvious he was desperate to do anything to avoid playing word communication. He would rather undergo surgery than do a blindfolded obstacle or sit face to face with Scully to have her tell him the things that really bother her about their partnership.

Sure, she had a few complaints herself but she couldn't imagine actually voicing them to him. She imagined he had a few gripes himself but the curiosity in her was dying to know what irked him.

The ones she might mention would all sound ridiculous and she couldn't bring herself to telling him something as obvious as “Just once, I want you to listen to my theory about the science and not pervert it into a something ridiculous you might hear from someone.” She worried he might finish that sentence with "Like Diana?"  
   
"What are you thinking about over there?" Scully asked, still taking notes.

She looked over her shoulder to see him slightly askew and obviously pensive.  
   
"Nothing," Mulder obviously lied.  
   
"Nothing?" she repeated and studied him.   
   
"I was thinking about the partnership conference we almost went to in Florida," he replied. "Kersh mentioned it to me the last time I brought by a report and I think he's looking to send us on one again."  
   
"Are you working on your excuses now or are you hoping I'll diagnose you with a debilitating condition that will coincidentally come on the day before and last for a period of five days?" Scully asked sardonically.   
   
"Do you want to go?" he asked her.   
   
Before she could answer, there was a knock at the door and the relief team agents piled in with a thermos, food and sleeping bags. Mulder held Scully's coat out to her and donned his own. 

"Lights just came back on but the suspect's apartment is quiet," Scully relayed.  
   
"Bundle up out there," Agent Tolliver advised. "It's colder than a witch's tit!"  
   
Mulder smiled painfully and held the door for Scully. The frequently utilized analogies that men in law enforcement used around female agents was always a source of contention.  
   
With a curt wave, they were off-duty and bundling up in the hallway to prepare for a cold drive back to Georgetown.  


	5. Office Decorations

**Saturday, December 5th,**  
**Kmart, Hyattsville, Maryland**  
1:45 a.m.

  
Mulder held up the roll of lime green, shiny wrapping paper Scully had made a face at. "Green?" 

She nodded and pointed to the one next to it. "Grab the yellow one too." 

"I have a box of office paper at my place for paper snowflakes," Mulder pointed out and picked up a few strings of twinkle lights. "White icicle lights or candy coloured flashing to a non-sensible rhythm lights?" 

"The flashing gives me a headache.... definitely the candy coloured ones," Scully said with a smile and continued to toss ornaments and decorations into their cart. "Oh and grab a box of candy canes."

"For them?" Mulder asked, picking up two different boxes, long and short.

"No, for us," she called over her shoulder. 

The Kmart was surprisingly busy for the hour that they arrived. This particular store was notorious for being open 24 hours and they had frequented it in the past when working together. Scully visited their hosiery while she complained to Mulder it felt like she spent half her take-home pay on pantyhose that only seemed to last a couple of wears. 

As they rounded the corner out of the seasonal department towards the check out line, Scully stopped short. 

"What?" Mulder came up behind her and placed his hand on her back.

There, in the middle of the Kmart checkout line up was Alvin Kersh and he was purchasing a Santa suit. He was holding up the box and discussing it animatedly with a woman, they could only assume was his wife. Not knowing whether to move forward because of the evidence in their cart or back away, she was also entranced by seeing him out shopping and picking up an item such as a Santa suit.

Reaching around her, Mulder pushed the cart back into an aisle near housewares. 

"I..." The sentence stopped as soon as it started.

"Like seeing a teacher out of school?" he described and she nodded slowly. "And he's here at two a.m. on a Friday. With his wife."

"Yeah," she nodded, contemplating. Scully looked up at her partner and smiled. "He would possibly be just as shocked to see us here at this time of night. Together."

"I would suggest we wait it out since the evidence of our misdeeds are in this cart and we couldn't brush it off as a coincidence. No one would ever believe you would buy this tacky wrapping paper and I obviously don't know enough people to need this much," he pointed out. 

Scully eyed the box of canes Mulder was holding. 

"Want one?" Mulder asked and he was suddenly very interested in watching her suck on one.

She looked up and him and smiled. "Yeah but we have to wait to pay."

"Dana Scully will eat a brownie before supper but won't pilfer a candy cane before you pay for them even though you pay by the box and not by the weight?" he teased and began to tear open the packages.

“Mulder,” she began but she smiled regardless.

Secretly, they both knew that she liked the side of him that made her break the rules. They had a conversation about authority and handling discipline a few weeks ago while parked outside his apartment. She told him that if she was being honest with herself, sometimes the thrill of breaking the rules with him was like smoking her mother's cigarette's when she was thirteen. That made him hard immediately and he had to make a quick getaway.

Mulder thought long and hard about her confession. He wore a leather jacket. He thumbed his nose at authority and his arrogance was aggravating to no end. 

"Give me one," she said and held out her hand. 

Mulder peeked around their aisle and could no longer see A.D. Kersh. He tore into the box of small ones and handed her one. The thin plastic crinkled between his fingers and the confection felt as though it was barely holding it together. He could sympathize. Since the two kisses they shared at her mothers, making out in his car and the quick kiss before the stake out, he was dying to kiss her again. He felt amped up and ready to grab her in that aisle, Kersh be damned.

"Have you been a good girl this year?" Mulder asked in a deep baritone.

Scully sighed and smiled secretively at him. "I have but I'm trying to rectify that."

This was the banter that was reserved for outside the office and for the off-hours they were spending more of. Whether it was the admission of love on his part and her reaction that made him willing to prove it to her or perhaps it was being forced to work in a bullpen on background checks for potential federal employees, there was a new sense of bonding. 

Scully peeked her head around the aisle and nodded once to Mulder. "Let's go pay for these and make some snowflakes."

It might have sounded like an innocent offer but the dip in her voice went right to Mulder's dick. He was glad for the binding nature of his long johns.

As they were paying for their items, the bored teller behind the register glanced between the agents. "Is that going to be all for you and your wife?"

"That's it," Mulder replied with a smile. 

His obvious enjoyment for them being confused as a married couple was not a secret between them. The other agents on the floor called Scully 'the Missus' behind her back and to him. Even though he corrected them to their faces, he was happy to be linked to her in those terms. She was the best person he knew and almost his human credential to most agents and law enforcement. When he rambled on, when he went off on a tear, if he went out on a limb, she was there to pull him back and help him see the truth.

Scully opened her mouth to protest but then closed it in that frustrated ‘I’m giving up’ way she did that was sexy and cute.

As they packed up Mulder's car, the snow began to fall down around them again. The overhead lights of the parking lot gave her a halo. Snow was sticking to their jackets and on the top of the car. Small flakes were sticking to the wisps of her hair with the candy cane she was eating sticking out of the edge of her mouth. She appeared tired and her hooded eyes made her look a little dangerous. He felt the urge to kiss her again.

He knew they would be taking things at a snail's pace if it was up to her, but he couldn't wait another two days to taste her mouth again. So there, standing at the trunk of his car, Mulder pulled the confection from her lips and leaned down to kiss her again.

Her lips were open as if on instinct, as though learning every nuance to his kissing the other night made her lips ready for him. She must have been able to tell he wanted to kiss her inside Kmart. Maybe after their stakeout, or when he dropped her off after their supply run, but he was determined to taste the lips of Dana Scully. The electricity in his body was strong and focused on her.

Their tongues danced and his hand wove in her hair. He could taste the peppermint from the candy and a hint of the coffee they shared earlier. Lightly, her fingers looped at his belt, brushing against his evident want for her.

Scully stepped back and took the candy cane from his fingers. She popped it back in her mouth and wiped at the edges of her lips. She was breathtaking.

The physical desire his body displayed seemed to be the thing that stopped her from allowing things to progress further. If he could will his body to respond to her less, he would. Being allowed to kiss her now, to touch her in any way beyond their professional boundaries excited him. Maybe it was the fact that his body responded so quickly that was off-putting to her.

What if it didn't excite her too? He had the sinking feeling maybe he wanted her more than she wanted him. It wouldn't surprise him if he did. 

"Back to your house?" he suggested, suddenly worried he couldn’t read her.

"We should go," she said, licking her lips.

Mulder closed the trunk of the car and wordlessly hopped into the driver's seat.   
   
******  
   
As he sat there cutting up snowflakes out of white paper he had taken from the bureau copier room and kept under his desk, he wondered if he was in another vivid dream that he would need to dissect. He could see the scissor blades cutting against the paper so clearly and the sound of Scully humming as she worked seemed off in the distance.

Mulder brushed his thumb along the sharp blade of the scissors and felt the twinge of an almost cut. He stopped momentarily and remembered driving to his place to get the box of paper. Usually events like that are skipped over during his dreams.

For as long as they've been partners, when he hasn't had nightmares, she's invaded his dreams. The PG-rated ones he could tell her about but never would, involved her stopping for food, making them a big breakfast after working all night at a crime scene and falling asleep together on her couch. Those dreams always made him slightly more uncomfortable than the ones that involved her berry pink lips wrapped around his favourite appendage or giving him a lap dance at his desk, slowly peeling off her harsh suits before riding him wearing nothing but her chunky black heels. 

The sex dreams, at first, were understandable. She made no overtures to him about sexual needs or desires of her own while tolerating his obvious desires and need for release. He respected her, he cared about her, and he was attracted to her. But the dreams about them doing things as totally mundane and normal for a couple to do such as cuddling were a signal to him there were deeper feelings underlying everything he obviously felt about her.

He tried to brush her off as a partner, this assignment that was forced on him in order to stay open as the X-Files and his mind continued to contemplate her in his sleep. Perhaps in the beginning that was why he acted so abruptly to her. If he was being honest with himself, he didn’t trust the right people and worried he would make the same mistake again.

What Mudler never knew was if Scully dreamt about him too. Did she think about him the way he contemplated her? Was he a mystery to her or was he that obvious? They had kissed under the mistletoe and then they had kissed for intent. They had made out in his car, steamed up the windows and he still had no idea what the hell she was thinking.

He told her he loved her earlier this year and she brushed it off. He couldn't wait for that argument to come bubbling up between them, to watch her try to rationalize his drug-induced confession.  
   
Mulder looked across the couch to where she was perched. Scully had her eyebrows raised as her scissors made a careful pattern and the tip of her tongue stuck out at her top lip. A small stick of peppermint sat at the side of her mouth. The face obviously helped her concentrate better on her craft at hand. The fire was roaring in her living room and Christmas carols played quietly on her stereo.

They had removed the rest of their unnecessary layers and were stretched out in jeans and t-shirts. Her warm socks had been discarded after the fireplace had been turned on and Mulder spent ten or so minutes distracted by her toes.

"Should we make a string out of popcorn and cranberries?" she asked, not looking up from her cutting. 

"If you want to put that on your desk at the bureau, I won't stop you but I think we should stick to tacky and gaudy for the basement," Mulder replied.

"Did the Gunmen tell you if they could do anything to the surveillance?" Scully asked. Mulder was certain he was dreaming. "What are you doing?"

"I thought this was another one of my dreams," he replied and looked around the apartment. "Sometimes when I dream of stuff like this there's a dancing cockroach outside on your street."

During the case with Bambi Berenbaum and the cockroaches, when Mulder had called her initially he was sitting in his car thinking about the significance of the dreams he had been having. He had realized while talking to her the little nothing conversations and the sexless dreams were a sign to his heart. Of course, he wasn't ready to accept it then. 

"Stuff like this? And how is the dancing cockroach significant?" she asked and switched the candy cane in her mouth to the other side with her tongue.

"I don't know,” he lied and frowned when no cockroach appeared. Mulder picked up the string of lights they had purchased and looked at them as though they might have some answers to where their relationship was going. "Usually when I see it, I know I’m dreaming.”

“Your psyche never ceases to confuse me, Mulder,” she muttered with a shake of her head.

“Try being up here,” he said tapping his temple and she chuffed a laugh. “So, you're serious about getting them to loop the security cameras? You know when I tell Frohike it's your idea, it might kill him, Scully."

"They probably won't believe that it's my idea," Scully said with a smile, her eyes not leaving her craft. "In fact, I _know_ they won't."

"Wanna bet?" Mulder countered.

"Make me a wager, Agent Mulder." Scully snipped the final piece and put her scissors down. " _Tada_!"  
   
He was actually impressed at the paper snowflakes she had just cut. She had a nice stack of them and was planning to hang them from the ceiling tiles with string.  
   
"I think that's good enough."

He watched as she stifled a yawn and shrug, stretching her shoulder blades up and down her back.

"We have another late night tomorrow," Mulder said in reference to another night of spying on Darren Hills. He was next to her on the couch and moved the string of lights off his lap but his body wanted to spread out on top of hers and make her moan. "I should get going."

Scully merely nodded, her exhaustion obviously beginning to mount and never being one to kick him from her apartment. She would always try to stay up as late as he did but often times failed, slumping in the corner of hospital hallways, cars and against him to get some shut eye.

He stood slowly and made his way to the door, looking around her apartment. "You don't have your tree up yet."

"Next weekend," she said and chewed on what was left of the small candy.

"I'll pick you up tomorrow at two-thirty?" he confirmed and she nodded. 

As they stood at the doorway of Scully's apartment, he had yet to put his jacket on.

Mulder felt compelled to kiss her again but didn't know if he should push it. He wanted to push it.  
  
Searching her eyes for a sign, he leaned down and kissed her. It was soft at first, tentative until she sighed and he pulled her towards him.  
   
Hands on her hips, he tried to keep her at a distance. She pulled him to her and deepened the kiss. After a few moments, it was Mulder who pulled away.  
   
"I should go," he said, his voice rough with arousal.   
   
Fingers toyed at the collar of his t-shirt and she played with the hair at the back of his neck. "Okay."  
   
Mulder studied her face if 'okay' meant 'okay go' or it meant something more. He kissed her again and this time she pulled him towards her, pressing her hips into his. He pushed her up against the doorway and snaked one hand down to her backside. Her leg looped around his hips and he ground himself into her.  
   
Breaking the kiss, she moaned at the feeling of him pressing against her centre.   
   
"Scully, I really should go," he repeated and she nodded in reluctant agreement.   
   
Her wet eyes studied him as she sucked on her bottom lip.   
   
He really needed to get the hell out of there. They hadn’t discussed what all this meant and if they were merely acting on hormones with the intent to move back to friends, he couldn’t stay there. If he stayed there, he would want her completely and he couldn’t go back to the way things were if that happened.

Mulder slowly collected his things and donned his down jacket. "I'll ask the Gunmen if they can help us do a little espionage tomorrow night."  
   
"I'll see you at two thirty," Scully said airily and opened her front door for him.

He gave her another longing look and left her apartment. He caught her watching him as he turned the corner around the hallway and he almost turned back. Almost.


	6. Funky Poaching

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scarves, walking in the snow and decorating the office.

**Saturday, December 5th**  
**12:30 p.m.**

  
When Mulder finally awoke early Saturday afternoon, he was actually looking forward to a mundane stakeout. After eight hours in the apartment above Darren Hills, they were going to bust into their old office and decorate it. In his wildest imagination, he never anticipated this idea would come from Scully.

When he arrived home last night, his body was no longer wired and aroused but his mind ran wild with want and desire. She had initiated the kiss going further last night, assuaging any worry he had that he would always be the instigator.

So far, nothing they had done could not be taken back and he was hoping they would cross every line before she could change her mind. If he was being honest with himself, he didn't want her to do anything she wasn't comfortable with. Her mind needed to process and categorize every option, every pro and con before stepping forward. For once, he wanted her to leap and then look with him.

Knowing he needed to arrive at work with his wits about him, and not about spending three to four hours with his face buried in Scully's folds, he touched himself in the shower, getting himself off so his mind could focus.

He didn't need to think about what he wanted to do to her. The usual routine would be to picture her in various states of undress and try to imagine himself buried deep inside her. This morning, his mind only used the experiences of kissing her in his car and her apartment door last night. The memory of her lithe body between his and the wall heightened his desire for her. An image crept into his mind of taking her there but he pushed it aside. Release found him more quickly as he used the experience of her, hoping if she ever knew of such acts she would find it flattering instead of repulsive.

As he was towelling off after his shower and before he could shave the stubble from his day of growth, the phone rang. "Mulder."

"I've got some good news about our little shindig tonight but I don't want to talk about it on this line. Can you come by?" Frohike reported.

Mulder looked at his watch. If he went to the Gunmen's now, he might still have time to pick up Scully before they had to check in at the bureau before their surveillance detail. It would be cutting it close.

"Sure, Melvin, I'll be by soon."

“Don’t use my real name, man!” Frohike admonished before hanging up.

He shook his head at the dial tone on the phone and clicked the End button. He looked around his apartment. Not knowing what kind of gear he would need, he packed long johns, long sleeved shirts for under his jeans and sweater as well as his down jacket. Then he packed extra socks, gloves and a hat. If he was going to freeze in another empty apartment, he would be prepared. He packed an extra sweater without thinking and headed to the Lone Gunmen’s.

  
*****

  
"You're trying to tell us this was _Scully's_ idea?" Langly said with disbelief, not looking up from his computer screen.  
  
"She said she always wanted to wall-to-wall wrapping paper Skinner's office," Mulder explained and the Gunmen all looked at him as if he had grown a second head. He held up his hands in defense. "Gentlemen, I checked for the green mark on the back of her neck. It's no alien clone of Scully. She said it."  
  
"Shape-shifting alien clone of Scully," Frohike repeated. "You can put that on my Christmas list dressed in a festive nightie."

"Easy there, Melvin. Would you say that if she was standing here?" Mulder warned and Frohike nodded. "You're a sick little man but I'll tell her you say hi."

“So are you decorating Skinner’s office?” Langly asked.

“One better,” Mulder replied with a grin. “We’re going to do the basement.”

Langly laughed and Frohike gave Mulder a high five. These guys were as cool as they were geeks which suited Mulder’s lack of social graces just fine.

"We might not be able to hack the security feed from off-site," Byers reported. "If you want us to change what security sees as well as what's recorded to the satellite, we might need to position ourselves on the roof of the parkade."

"I can get you an FBI surveillance van to work from," Mulder offered and they looked at him with awe.

"You can't use the equipment but it will be warmer than the VW," Mulder replied.

"How are you going to get a surveillance van?" Byers asked.

"I have to leave some mystery, boys," Mulder said as he put his jacket back on. "We'll swing by when we're off work."

"Eight hours in an empty apartment with Scully," Frohike said with a grin.

Mulder shook his head. "We'll be on the company clock, Frohike. Get your mind out of the gutter."

Frohike started working on the ten-lock system they had to let Mulder out back into the winter air. "Tell Scully I've been working out."

Mulder gave him the best constipated look he could make with a thumbs up sign and walked quickly to his car. The snow from last night crunched under his feet and he pulled the knit scarf tighter around his face to fight the bitter wind that blew through the warehouses.

He only had ten more hours until he and Scully would be performing their own little espionage act on their old office.

 

*****

**Queens Apartment Complex  
December 6th, 11:45p.m.**

Tonight they were sitting in the apartment above Darren Hills versus across the street. The FBI, specifically Agent Pruist, had the super turn the essentials on that morning when Hills was running errands. For as terrible as this assignment was, Mulder tried to look on the bright side. The apartment was empty but heated, the water was on and they had power. Pruist had moved in a few essentials such as a couch, a long table and office chairs set up so they could operate their surveillance with some ease.  
  


Why they did not have the apartment they were in last night and were forced to sit in a cold building remained unknown to them and Mulder didn't care to ask. This was another crap assignment he had to endure but the benefits of one-on-one time with Scully outweighed the annoyance of taking orders from a twenty-five year old, brown nosing pisser of an agent who seemed more interested in servicing his own career than serving the public.

If he could think of someone he thought Pruist reminded him of, it was the hothead that Scully knew from the Academy, Tom Colton. His slick hair and blue suit as well as his know it all attitude, trying to save Scully from the X-Files assignment. Colton and Pruist gave Mulder the same look when Mulder told him the difference between green and grey aliens.  
  
Scully looked up from the monitor to study Mulder again, looking at him suspiciously. He was well aware that she had barely spoken to him when he picked her up to head into the bureau to check in with the command team.  
  
_What changed from last night?_  
  
Since their arrival at the stakeout, she had spoken to him only when necessary. Sometimes during a 'freeze out' from her, he would respect the mood and leave it alone. Sometimes he poked and prodded her until she cracked.

"I can feel you looking at me, Scully," Mulder said, looking up from his notes. "What did I do?"

"Where were you this morning?" Scully asked, setting her pen down.

"I was at home, alone. Then I met up with the Gunmen and came straight here," he reported. "Why?"

Scully shook her head and turned away from him.

"No seriously. You asked and now I get to know why," Mulder pushed.

Scully set down her pen and sighed as though he was asking her for the millionth time if she believed in aliens. "Agent Halloren said something that-"

"Who?" He interrupted.

"She's friends with Diana," Scully replied and he could see the embarrassment rising in her cheeks. Scully had a lot of tells and he had learned them over the years. "Never mind. I just saw your scarf and thought-"

Mulder looked over at the scarf he had tossed on the desk when they started dressing down. "My scarf?"

"It's really... It's nothing. Women talk just the same as men do in bathrooms or locker rooms. You'd be surprised what people lie about," she replied.

Mulder realised she was rationalizing the gossip she had overheard at work.

"I've heard talk of you and Brinkley this whole week," Mulder replied and her brow furrowed. "Jerrod Brinkley? Beach Boy Brian Wilson with the California tan in D.C. winter?"

"Mulder, I've spent all my off-hours with you," she reminded him and he looked at her expectantly. A look of realization came over her. "Oh."

He crossed the small living room they were seated in and knelt down in front of her. In a concerned tone, he said, "Frohike thinks you're an alien clone and wants to dress you in some festive nighties."

Scully laughed. "No, you saw the back of my neck."

"Maybe they came up with a new place to hide the green lump," he said with an accompanying leer.

Scully turned back toward her work and lowered her voice. "Okay, you can check later."

"Promise?" He asked, watching the back of her head. She nodded her head slightly. "I'll try to perform a thorough investigation."

"I look forward to reading your report, Agent Mulder," Scully murmured. "Mulder come look at this."

Sliding his chair towards hers, he peered over Scully's shoulder to the monitor she was looking at. "Who do you see in that picture?"

Mulder leaned in close. "I don't know, a woman."

She sighed disappointedly. "Mulder, you have an eidetic memory. Where have you seen her before?"

He racked his brain for where he had seen the woman.

"Last Tuesday, at lunch," she prompted.

He felt a lightbulb turn on.

"Are you sure?" he asked and she nodded. "So, Agent Pruist's girlfriend is known to the suspect. Or the suspect is dating someone known to Agent Pruist."

"He couldn't possibly be so stupid," she said, a skip to her voice. "There's no way no one noticed."

"Pruist and Gillman did the background," Mulder reminded her. "Hills is in for the night and I'm not sure what else we can do until Monday morning at the debriefing."

"What can we do? We are scheduled to come back here Sunday afternoon," Scully reminded him, glancing over her shoulder and noticing their close proximity. "I think we have to tell Kersh."

"No one will believe it if it comes from us," he said.

"Evidence doesn't lie," Scully countered as he moved closer and her lips curled into a smile. "Mulder."

"I say we record what we see and let the relief team put two and two together. While the relief team is figuring out how to unspend this money on the investigation, we will be spreading yuletide cheer in our old office," he described with a smile. "I'm sure there's a photo of the woman in question and Pruist somewhere."

As his mouth slowly inched its way towards hers, she pulled away. "What if she's his informant?"

A knock at the door and Mulder stood up, taking a step away from Scully. "Yeah?"

As it had turned out, their relief team was on time and they were able to leave. Scully left the camera focused on the picture on the side table and grabbed her belongings.

Mulder tied his scarf, another impersonal gift from his father when he was alive, around his neck and bid the agents good night.

  
  
*********

  
  
One might think wrapping a desk, a chair and the filing cabinets would be a silly idea to Scully but she jumped on the idea so fast Mulder might have thought she was spending her off hours learning how to wrap office furniture. With the lack of time to do both Skinner and the X-Files, they agreed on pranking the new inhabitants of the X-Files basement office.

Once the Gunmen looped the video from the van on the roof of the parkade, they successfully entered their old office. It was tempting to look through the filing cabinets at case reports and files they were ignoring. If it wasn't for Frohike radioing to Mulder they only had a limited time, they might have foregone the wrapping just to snoop around.

Scully taped the last of the lime green shiny paper around the desk and stepped back to admire her handiwork. "I think you can bring the phone and the blotter over here, if you're finished, Mulder."

"Done. Lights and snowflakes next?" Mulder suggested and she nodded.

Scully had been a busy bee that morning, putting different length strings on each of the snowflakes they had cut.

"It's almost too bad we won't be able to enjoy all this for ourselves," Mulder said contemplatively.

"I taped the desk drawer shut," Scully replied solemnly and they burst out laughing. "Okay, we should finish."

Mulder wandered into the back area that he used to utilize for reviewing tapes, looking around at what was being stored back there. He can recall many heated conversations with Scully, feeling like if he could just convince her it would be enough. If she believed him, he would have enough evidence for the rest of the world. But she was his benchmark. She was the one person who he measured everyone and everything else against.

Then he saw it.

"Oh no!"

Scully came rushing to the back of the office, a string of lights in her hand. "What?"

"It's even worse than I thought," Mulder said and pointed to a pair of skis and ski boots currently being stored back there. "Your - er- the stepladder is gone."

"Nice save," she noted as she looked around for it. "Damn, it's gone."

"Diana always wanted me to try snowshoeing with her," Mulder said as he studied the snowshoes in the corner.

"I would say these are a better size for Agent Spender," Scully replied.

"Grab that fold out chair," he instructed, hoping to sidestep the little nugget of information he had just revealed.

Scully handed him the fold out chair and she put her hands on her hips expectantly. Mulder placed it behind the desk and watched as she climbed up. He could only be disappointed that in this reality, she was wearing flat shoes instead of her usual chunky heels. He always had a fantasy of her falling off that ladder, catching her then kissing her. Well, to be honest, the fantasy extended to doing other things however if he started thinking about that, they might not get out of the office.

Looking back to what was in front of him, his attention focused on Scully’s denim-clad derriere, her soft sweater riding up as she tried to pin up the lights and a small strip of ivory skin and the red and yellow swirls of her tattoo.

"Can you hand me those thumb tacks?" She asked, reaching behind her. When Mulder said nothing, she looked down, over her shoulder and saw where he was looking. "Something catch your attention, Agent?"

Wordlessly, Mulder held up the plastic cylinder of multicoloured thumb tacks and dragged his eyes up to hers.

It was a mistake. They knew that now. Being alone in their old office at two a.m. after a pointless stake out with hormones and curiosity bubbling. They were doing something that was supposed to be a prank but the close proximity and the newness of their romantic relationship, Mulder felt impressed he hadn't mauled Scully the moment they were alone in the apartment.

Mulder dropped the thumb tacks as she dropped the lights she was holding and he pulled her to him. With his tongue currently taking inventory of her mouth, he picked her up, as she wrapped her legs around his waist, setting her on the edge of the newly covered desk. Mulder was glad they purchased the shiny, almost plastic paper at that moment because the thin, snowman covered paper Scully had contemplated would have torn from the friction of him grinding his hips into hers.

Scully pulled at his t-shirt, untucking it from his jeans and ran her nails down the smooth skin of his back. Hips ground harder into hers and he felt himself pressing the entire length of his desire against her inner thigh.

"God!" she cried out.

He kissed her again, not ready to ever stop and cupped her breast over her sweater while the other hand worked its way between her jeans and the smooth skin of her belly.

"Holy fuck," he grumbled as he encountered her soaking wet panties.

"I-" was all she could get out because they were kissing again while pulling at each other's clothing.

Jeans were undone, and her hand was firmly wrapped around his length while he flicked at the bundle of nerves at her centre with two deft fingers. The feeling of his member in her hand as he felt the slickness of her desire against his fingers was his new favourite thing. A small droplet of precum sat at the tip of his dick and she picked it up with her thumb and sucked on it before moving her hand up and down his shaft again.

"You gotta stop, Scully," Mulder breathed and she looked up at him. The sight of her pale blue eyes, swollen lips and his hand down her pants was almost enough to make him come right there. "I don't want to..."

Scully nodded and pulled her hand out of his boxers, looking longingly at the tented material. "Okay."

"I want to but not here," he clarified.

Scully stilled his hand that was starting to maneuver its way around her panties and creep towards her entrance. Not an easy feat in her tight little jeans.  
  
"I don't want to if you can't," she said.

Mulder kissed along her jawline and nipped at the skin under her ear. That was the spot Mulder had discovered recently that made Scully almost squeak and if he was kissing her there, he could prolong the kissing.

The desire to kiss her again since their first kiss was staggering. Even during the work hours, when he appeared to be professional, he thought about kissing her. Now that he knew he could, the desire for her that was lingering felt as though it was on a slow burn. Maybe to the outside, it seemed fine but internally he was craving her. Amazing how your imagination can make up for everything else except for the sensations and anticipation an open mouthed kiss could bring. It was a divine pleasure he wanted to experience every day.

His fingers began moving against her clit again faster while his other fingers worked around her entrance. Before his hand could cramp or she could argue against convictions of who could and couldn’t, her body went taught. She gasped into his neck and clutched at his shirt. Mulder hugged her and turned to watch her as he rode out the waves of her orgasm, holding her, watching her face, taking in every change.

Her body shuddered and she let out a long breath. "Uh."

"That was incredible," he said and placed a lingering kiss on her forehead.

They looked into one another’s eyes and Mulder kissed her lips softly as his fingers stilled inside her.

The radio on the filing cabinet buzzed and Langly's voice filled the office. "Hey Mulder, how's your progress? We might not want to be here for too much longer."

Removing his hand from her pants, they shared a surprised smile and he answered the radio.

"Sure, guys. Just a few other things to do here."

Scully glanced at the evident desire for her in his jeans with longing and they shared a look of promise.

“Later,” he said and she nodded in agreement.

Quickly, he hung the differing length strings and snowflakes while Scully hung the lights along the outer area of the office. As usual, working alongside one another proved to be an exercise in efficiency and if there was going to be a decorating contest at the next communication seminar, he felt confident they would ace it.

"You know Mulder, maybe we should go to the next communication seminar," she said as she picked up the last of the thumb tacks and placed them back on the desk.

"Anything you want to get off your chest?" he asked, suddenly feeling worried.

"No, but we build towers of bodies and decorate offices really well. Maybe Kersh will give us a break once he sees why they always pair us together," she teased.

"I hope they leave this up," Mulder said, looking around at their handy work. "I should have let you do this years ago."

Scully dug the office door key out of her pocket and headed for the door while Mulder collected the last of their supplies. "Coulda woulda shoulda."

Mulder handed the box to her and took out his small, pocket-sized camera. The lights were flashing at an annoying beat, the desk, chair and filing cabinets were wrapped in yellow and green shiny paper. A dancing Santa playing the piano was ready to sing when someone walked in and snowflakes hung from the ceiling tiles.

It looked like the tackiest Christmas elf threw up all over their basement.

He placed the camera on a timer and pulled her towards the desk. "Smile, Scully."


	7. Couches and Shopping

**Sunday, December 6th**  
Georgetown,  
Dana Scully's Apartment

 

The gentle rocking motion of the car put Scully to sleep as they drove back to her apartment. Mulder didn’t appear to be disappointed when he walked her to the door and kissed her gently on the forehead good night. It was four am and they were both exhausted. If anything was going to progress physically for them, she wanted them to be awake for it. 

It was the most tempting thing to invite him in and ask him to spend the night in her bed. Except, she knew they were sprinting towards the finish during a marathon. Mulder might counter argue that the last six years had been the actual marathon but she knew it was only for her benefit. He wanted the X-Files back more than she did and before they got them back, maybe this was or wasn't the next logical step for them. 

Deep down, she was not interested in being a temporary distraction from his sorrow of desk duty. At some point, she knew she would only be able to be with Mulder however she still worried it wasn't their time. Too many things lingered unfinished. They needed answers. What about Samantha? Krycek killed her sister and his father. Would they ever bring him to justice? 

When Scully awoke the next morning, she continued to contemplate her doubts about moving forward. Since she woke up too late for morning mass, she debated about what to do regarding her and Mulder as she took a long shower.

Scully took her time in the shower, recalling the feeling of Mulder's hands and lips on her last night. The emotional side of her normally logical brain wanted to jump in, to taste every inch of Mulder's skin and sweat. His actions spoke loudly for how he felt about her yet there were things she still needed to overcome. Maybe it wasn't her brain that needed more from Mulder but her heart that still needed proof.

The part of her that ran from her emotions was trying to argue that she should stop what they were doing. They crossed a big line in their old office and their hormones got the better of them. Mulder brought her to her undoing with the deft movements of the fingers she had wondered about for more years than she would like to admit. It was surprising and wonderful but her mind crept in with doubts to weigh on her heart.

It was a relief that her mother would be by in the next half hour to pick her up to do some Christmas shopping. Even though Maggie Scully had purchased the majority of her gifts, there were a few stragglers she needed to pick up and appreciated Dana’s input during her contemplation over sweater A versus sweater B.

As she was blow drying her hair, there was a soft knock on the door. To her surprise, it was Mulder holding coffees and a white paper bag.

"Open up, Scully. I brought bagels," he said.

Debating whether or not she should put her sweater on, she opened the door to her partner. She had on slacks and a camisole, bare feet peeking at him.

Mulder looked down at her petite frame and grinned. "Nice shirt."

Leaving his shoes at the front door, he sat himself down on the couch, arranging the impromptu breakfast on the coffee table. 

"My mother is coming by so we can finish our Christmas shopping," Scully said as she closed her door.

Her statement and tone said 'leave my house' but her actions said 'stay.' Even she couldn’t always understand herself.

"I know. She called to tell me to meet her here," Mulder replied and took a healthy bite of his poppyseed bagel. 

"She did?" Scully had not moved but glanced at the clock again. 

"Yeah, come sit down next to me here, Scully," Mulder patted the couch. The non-verbal communication worked well for them in times of discomfort and apprehension. "I won't bite."

"I should finish getting dressed," she said as she approached him.

He nodded, taking in the sight of her fitted camisole and toned form. She wasn't going to lie, she liked it when he looked at her like that.

What usually won every internal argument she had with herself was logic and responsibility. When Mulder made one of his 'remarks,' she would smirk, roll her eyes or ignore him. When she did allow a comeback to slip out, she saw the surprise on his face. That side of Dana Scully was out on occasion but Mulder had yet to see her full force. The rebellious side of herself, that liked to argue against logic, wanted to show Mulder everything.

Instead of getting dressed, Scully took in the sight of Mulder, jeans and a sweater, casual on his off-hours. So much of Scully argued with herself and talked about her doubts but there was also a big part of herself that wanted him. He was sexy, he was frustrating and he kissed her exactly the way she liked to be kissed.

Standing in front of him, she took his cup and bagel from him, setting it on the table behind her and straddled his lap.

" _Hello_ ," Mulder said with surprised eyes and amusement. "This is fun."

"This is fun," she agreed.

She kissed him long and deep, her fingers running through his recently trimmed hair while grinding her little bottom into his groin. The partial arousal he felt at seeing her in a half state of undress amped up to fully turned on. She felt the evidence of it against her leg. While his mouth continued to seek hers with every turn of their heads, it was him that broke the kiss. He groaned loudly. 

"Scu _-_ leeee," her name drawn out unusually long. "You're killing me here."

"Oh, okay," she said lightly and started moving herself off Mulder. A firm grip held her in place. "Oh, was there something else?"

Deftly, he maneuvered her so that she was now underneath him and a girlish squeal escaped her. They both laughed.

"What was that?" he asked, still laughing but pressing his hips into hers.

One hand covered her mouth and she shook her head as to say 'I don't know.' Mulder took the opportunity to nip at the skin under her jaw and she could feel her eyes roll in the back of her head until the nips became more insistent. 

"Hey! No biting," she said and started to push him off. Her movements stalled when his tongue began to trace along her clavicle and his large hand cupped her backside. " _Oh_."

Hips ground into one another and her legs opened more to accommodate him in the V of her thighs. Scully reached between them to say hello to her new favourite Mulder appendage. Kissing and moaning, they hardly heard the knocking at the door.

The muffled voice of Mrs. Scully on the other side of the door, "Dana?"

Mulder jumped off Scully so fast she almost likened him to a Ronnie Strickland flying squirrel and watched him run to the bathroom.   
   
Reluctantly, she sat up as she pulled at her shirt and willed her body to cool down. She wiped a hand across her mouth and she took a few calming breaths.  
   
"Coming, Mom!" Scully called.

Her reflection was not dishevelled but she certainly looked as though she had been kissing someone. 

'Dana's got a boy on the couch!' She could almost hear Charlie and Melissa teasing her when they walked in to find her with her lab partner, Markus Lewis, on the plaid Scully family sofa on a Thursday when everyone was supposed to be out of the house. 

The embarrassment of her siblings finding them with Markus' hand up her shirt was beyond overwhelming. In return for not being ratted out to their parents and even their brother Bill, young Dana had to do many chores and favours. This time there were no siblings to tease and shame her. She was a grown woman who was kissing a man she worked with on the couch she paid for. 

"Dana?" her mother knocked again. 

Scully opened the door and let her mother in. Maggie took inventory of what she saw and narrowed her eyes. "Where's Fox?"

Mulder came trotting down the hallway and smiled at them. "Right here. Ready to pick out some gifts?"

"Yes! Dana, why don't you put a shirt on and we'll get going," Maggie suggested gently and Scully obediently made her way to her bedroom to get a sweater. 

When she returned, wearing a pale blue, fitted and short sleeved turtleneck, she saw Mulder slyly give her an appreciative once over. She could see the internal debate for wanting to take in her form but knowing it would be rude to check out a woman so blatantly in front of her mother. 

   
*******

 

**Chevy Chase Pavilion  
1:45 p.m.**

 

"Remind me why you asked Mulder to join us, Mom?" Scully asked as Mulder paid for his purchases at the counter. 

When Mulder saw the plaid green and orange fleece blanket he was paying for, his face lit up and he snagged it immediately. She had yet to find out why but was happy for the reprieve from his company. There were three other people in front of him and he was almost out of earshot from the Scully women. The department store wasn't that crowded but she knew he had learned to read her lips. They spent enough time staring at each others mouths.

"I need help purchasing some items for Bill and Charlie. I can never get sizes right with sweaters. He's here to help me," Maggie said innocently. "He said that he had some purchases to make also. What's wrong?"

"Charlie has about twenty pounds on Mulder," Scully replied and Maggie shook her head. "No?"

"He and Michelle went on a diet," Maggie said. "He looks good. If you were so inclined to join me the next time I go to California, you would see."

"What kind of diet?" Scully asked, knowing her sister-in-law's penchant for fad diets. 

Once, she called Scully about oranges and steak only as a diet and Scully pleaded with her to exercise more (if at all) and not to eat white sugar. That sounded too complicated for Michelle. Mulder had reminded Scully about bee pollen and yogurt diets but Scully argued that her diet at least consisted of a superfood.

"I think they took your advice," Maggie replied and glanced around. "She's cut white sugar and a lot of processed foods from their daily meals. They said they feel great. Try to be happy for them."

Scully narrowed her eyes at her mother. "I am. You know I think Michelle looks good no matter what size she is."

“What did I walk in on earlier?” Maggie asked her lightly and Scully shook her head innocently. “Unless Fox starting wearing the same shade as your Lancome brand…”

The jig was certainly up.

“We kissed at your house,” she admitted.

“Under the mistletoe,” Maggie added with a knowing smile.

“And in your bathroom,” Scully whispered. Maggie raised an eyebrow at her daughter. “And in his car…”

“And on your couch this morning?” Maggie asked and Scully felt her cheeks burning with embarrassment. “Dana, you’re no better a liar than you were with Markus from the twelfth grade.”

“You knew about Markus?” Scully asked in aghast and Maggie laughed at her.

Mulder reappeared by Scully's side. "All set."

 

*********

   
Mulder tried on ten different sweaters before Maggie picked two she liked for Charlie and another one she liked for Bill and a new tie. She found gloves and a hat for Mulder and a scarf for Dana. 

There was something strange about seeing Mulder being so complacent and willing for her mother in a way he hardly ever saw him behave with anyone else. He modelled the clothes without too much grumbling and winked at Scully when he exited the change room in a slightly hideous sweater that Maggie really liked for Bill.

She was certain Mulder putting on a little fashion show for her and her mother was possibly the most humiliating thing they could have him do until she remembered the Christmas party for the church that was approaching. 

"Those look like good snowball gloves," Scully noted to her mother as Maggie paid for her items.

"Very good snowball gloves," Maggie agreed.

The Scully's, when in inclement weather, were not a force to be reckoned with. Ahab insisted they all learn to ski, even to the dismay of the California born Scully children. Luckily, they all took to it like they did sailing but that didn't make his youngest daughter enjoy the snow any more. His eldest daughter found with the right outfit, she could meet 'interesting men.'  

At any ski resort, snowball fights broke out among the ski school kids. Somehow, Bill knew the perfect technique and took the time to teach Melissa, Dana and Charlie how to fight back. Once on a school trip to Bear Mountain, Dana Scully had used her expert aim to ward off any unwanted challenges from some older girls. When you nail the bully in the face with a fat, icy snowball, you're pretty much marked as someone not to be messed with. Not bad for the smallest (physically) Scully. 

"You wouldn't retaliate against bullies in such a fashion now, would you Dana?" Maggie teased, knowing her scrappy daughter had a history of not shying away from a good fight. 

"They don't really allow you to deal with problems that way in the FBI, Mom," Scully replied with a smile. "I have to file three different kinds of forms to file a complaint against another agent."

"Pity," Maggie replied and the ladies shared a laugh. 

"Are you still laughing at my model walk?" Mulder asked as he joined them at the check out.

"Discussing snowball fights," Maggie offered.

"Did you have the opportunity to get into many snowball fights in California?" Mulder asked Scully.

"Big Bear. Ahab made us all learn to ski," Scully reported, hoping no embarrassing teen year stories were about to come forward from Maggie. 

It must be a right of motherhood that because of the changes to your body, you can regale anyone and everyone who will listen to stories of major and humiliations of each child you have. Catholics with large families seemed to never have an end to stories to share. 

"Dana was an excellent skier," Maggie offered. 

"Cross country or downhill?" Mulder asked as though Scully was somewhere else. 

This was another favourite of her mother and Mulder's. When she was there, talk about her as though she wasn't. Dana is stubborn. Dana is too thin. Dana needs to wear less black. While she could appreciate that Mulder and her mom were friends, she didn’t appreciate the occasional tag-team when it came to taking better care of herself.

"Both but she can't skate," Maggie replied.

"I can hear you," Scully piped up, feeling annoyed.

She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at Mulder. She knew better than to pull an attitude with her mother. 

"Hey, don't blame me that you're fascinating," Mulder replied with a smile as he wrapped his arm around her in a jovial way.

Maggie smiled as though her heart was breaking from the amount of affection she had just witnessed. 

"Next time we see your mother, I'm going to ask about summers on the vineyard," Scully threatened, holding up a manicured finger to him.

"You'll have to ask our nanny if you want that kind of information," he replied, bouncing on his heels anxiously. "She is sixty four and living in Boca now, but I'm sure the next time we are down there on a case, she might have some good stories for you."

"What was your nanny's name?" Maggie inquired. 

"Beatriz Fernandez Huffington," Mulder replied and the Scully women stifled a laugh. "She was born and raised in Spain and barely spoke any English." 

"Really?" Scully asked.

"She was married to a landscaper on the vineyard. We called her Bee," Mulder replied. "She used to wear a white apron and make me cookies."

" _T'awwwww_ ," Maggie and Dana couldn't help it. 

It was too sweet a picture. A chestnut haired boy and curly haired girl, asking for cookies and milk from a plump Spaniard woman with dark eyes. 

Mulder gave the ladies a small smile, knowing this little tidbit of information would be appreciated by both of them. Emotionally Mulder was an open book but certain aspects of his childhood he tried to keep hidden from Scully and her mother. The truth of it was his mother wasn't a bad person but she had a different view of what motherhood was compared to families like the Scully's. 

Maggie checked her watch. "Are you working again tonight, Dana?"

"No, we have the night off. Do you need help with your tree?" She asked.

"Do you mind, dear?" Maggie asked in that tone Scully never said no to. 

Scully shook her head. "Not at all."

"Fox, I'll need your help too," Maggie told him and he nodded obediently. "Why don't we get some lunch then head over to the tree farm?"

Scully sent Mulder a look, hoping she knew he was free to duck out and spend the rest of his Sunday doing whatever he normally did on Sundays. 

Mulder smiled at her and rubbed his hand reassuringly across her lower back. "Shall we, ladies?"


	8. Christmas Trees, Hot Chocolate and Roasting Chestnuts

**Wednesday, December 9th**  
**Bennet Tree Farm**  
**Silver Spring, Maryland**

  
The tree farm smelled rich of pine and fir trees. The difference from the Shenandoah mountains and a farm is the lack in fauna surrounding the trees. The senses in the forest would try to distinguish between the moss, grass and wet wood while at a farm, it was the cool air and sap along with the freshly cut trees wafting around them. 

The farm was divided into Douglas, Fraser, noble and grand firs to the left and subdivided among each category. To the right was scotch, eastern white, and Virginia pines. At the very back were a thick collection of eastern red cedars. Men and women in denim, thick plaid jackets and short leather aprons wandered around the farm, helping and hauling each pick for families wandering around and choosing the tree that would fill their homes for the holiday season.

"It's a little too much piney goodness," Mulder quipped as they watched Maggie look over a tree she was considering.  
   
"I think these are fir trees," Scully replied, looking around for the sign. 

They had walked through aisles and aisles of trees, the sight of them was almost dizzying. The grey cloudy sky kept the temperature at a milder degree than the last few nights. They were grateful the tree farm had the stand-up propane heaters every twenty five feet they could warm up under. One might forget they were used to running through thick forests, chasing after monsters in the dark. Mulder teased Scully after their first pit stop under the propane heater they were getting soft on their desk duty.

"Did we finish looking at all the pines already?" he asked facetiously.

Scully nudged him and he laughed. "I'm going to look at the noble fir."

Mulder edged himself closer to the propane heater. "I might stay here for a minute, if you're okay picking out your own tree."

Scully smiled at him wryly. "I think I can manage."

Shopping and lunch on Sunday with the Scully women did not feel at all awkward as he thought it might. They had almost been caught making out on the couch when Maggie arrived yet she did not mention the state of her daughter's undress nor the almost kiss she interrupted as they waited for Maggie in the Starbucks line up. 

During the shopping excursion on Sunday, he had to try on ten or more sweaters for them. At one point, he had suggested just holding them up to himself for a sizing reference but Maggie looked up at him with her own perfected pleading look to go back into the change room and try on the next sweater. Mulder wondered if that look was something women learned during puberty or the mysterious class in sixth grade when girls are taught about the changes to their bodies. 

His mother, who had told him at Thanksgiving that she would be spending the holidays with her sister in Boston and extended no invitation towards him, had also given him that look throughout his teen years. When Scully gave him that look, he was helpless.  

Mulder wasn’t sure if it was luck or bad chance that their afternoon was called to a close early Sunday when he was called by the Gunmen about a lead and he regrettably left them at Macy's perfumes.

If Scully had any doubt about his feelings for her, he hoped his actions on Sunday proved he wasn't just in it for sex. He was looking forward to that part especially but he was sure she was aware of how he felt. 

Wasn’t she? They discussed a few things before and Mulder felt like she understood his intentions. He wouldn’t go Christmas shopping for a holiday he expected to spend alone for just anyone.

When he met up with Scully Monday morning at the bureau bullpen, she informed him to meet her at the tree farm on Wednesday night. Nothing could have made the week drag on slower than if they were doing door-to-door background checks in Iowa.

Looking around the farm, not seeing either women he arrived with, Mulder decided he should probably go hunting for them. As he rounded the corner of the row of trees, entering an area labelled “Scotch Pine,” there stood Jerrod California-tan Brinkley and the Scully women.

His blonde hair was hidden under a grey knit cap and he was wearing the plaid jacket and leather apron. Both women were smiling at him as though he was in charge of spreading the Christmas cheer for the D.C. area and proud of what a good job he was doing.

"There you are," Mulder greeted as he approached. "Hello Agent Brinkley."

"Agent Mulder," Jerrod extended his hand and they shook casually as two men can, who are trying to ascertain where the other stands. 

"Fox, did you know Jerrod's family runs this tree farm?" Maggie said, smiling at Brinkley.

"No, how about that," Mulder quipped and casually slung his arm across Scully's shoulders.

He suddenly worried if Scully would shrug it off or allow him to leave it there. He would pee around her and grunt at Brinkley if he thought the guy needed a clear territorial line but he was aware Dana and Maggie Scully would not find that charming.

"Half the people here are volunteers," Brinkley reported, glancing between Scully and Mulder then back to Maggie. "We donate a lot of our proceeds to the Saint Augustus Parish Christmas Drive."

"That's our church," Maggie said.

Scully smiled in confirmation, her cheeks now taking on a slightly rosy hue. Mulder’s mind began to contemplate why that would be. 

"My mother is organizing the toy drive," Brinkley offered.  

Maggie, if possible, became more interested in the conversation. "Is your mother Helen?"

Jerrod nodded and Mulder felt like this situation couldn't get more perfect if the fates had planned it. Jerrod was probably a practicing Catholic with Mulder's luck. His arm dropped from around Scully and he started to feel as though she didn't notice either way.

"Yes, she's not Brinkley though. She remarried last year."

"Right. To Tom Bennett from the church?" Maggie remembered. 

What Scully had explained one afternoon at lunch was that Maggie and Helen were of the young widows at the parish and were constantly being 'set up' with other widowers. Tom Bennett had showed up at a few 'teas' put on by the church and sat next to Maggie on occasion. Mulder felt he should get some kind of gold star for remembering such small details.

Jerrod nodded, appearing not to want to discuss that situation further. 

"What a small world," Maggie noted and they stood awkwardly for a beat. 

Mulder cleared his throat. "So, uh, Maggie-"

Brinkley interrupted. "That reminds me, what are you ladies looking for this year? Do you still need a tree?"

Scully looked around with the same skepticism usually reserved for a theory of Mulder's that involved tanker trucks or government conspiracies.

"I need something about six feet. All of your trees look a little too healthy for what my building would allow," Scully mentioned.

Brinkley smiled and took Scully by the elbow. She was being surprisingly compliant for someone who was only used to being lead around by Mulder.

"Ah, apartment living at its best. I'm sure we could find you a small one, Dana. I think we have an eastern white pine with your name on it," Brinkley said in a way that made him sound like used car salesman.

Mulder watched as the ladies walked off with the charming Jerrod Brinkley and he realized if he didn't follow suit he might get left without a second thought. 

As he walked behind them, he tried to act as opposite to petulant as possible but he wasn’t sure he was succeeding when he felt as though the sullen side of him was threatening to come out. He wanted Scully and Maggie to fawn over his stories of Bee but he also understood as an adult that Brinkley would be more helpful in a situation of picking out a Christmas tree.

What felt like hours later but was probably only an hour, they managed to pick a six foot eastern white pine for Scully's apartment, ready for delivery on Saturday morning and a Fraser fir for Maggie, ready for delivery the Friday morning. No confirmation was given if Brinkley would be the one delivering the tree but Mulder made a mental note to 'fall asleep' on Scully's couch if he could Friday night to ensure his presence Saturday morning. 

Usually, Mulder could tell how Scully felt about other men invading her space. She minded it a lot and never tolerated others leading her around by the elbow. She was used to it from her partner and rarely tolerated it from anyone else. Mulder felt some comfort in that up until now because she seemed to be almost as delighted as Maggie Scully to accept his attention. 

As they walked toward the parking lot, Maggie spotted a vendor selling hot chocolate and steered her daughter and Mulder towards the food truck. 

"Dana, they have roasted chestnuts!" Maggie said and pulled Scully toward the line up. "Fox would you like some too?"

The rich and sweet fragrance wafted towards them as they approached the vendor and Mulder recalled memories of roasting the true nuts when he was younger with his family. Of the good Christmas memories he had, roasting chestnuts on a fire outside with his father for his mother and sister to enjoy was one of them. His dad took him outside on the cold, New England evenings and showed him how to properly build a fire. 

"Pay attention, Fox, this could save your life one day," William Mulder advised his son, who was staring up into the starry sky. His son watched as he built a low teepee with small and large logs, then placed the roasting barrel over the top. "Your mother likes them right out of the fire. They're easier to peel that way."

The memory of his father's face lit by firelight and the sweet smell coming off the campfire was burned on his brain. The following year Samantha had been taken. There were no chestnuts roasted any year afterwards. 

Mulder watched as Scully stood in line with her mother, observing her more relaxed demeanor. Christmas was such a hectic time and their lives were nothing but a struggle to get back to the X-Files. It was nice to see her enjoying herself. 

Scully approached him with a paper bag with steam coming off and two hot chocolates. Mulder immediately took one cup and the bag. There was a large heated gazebo just nearby with log benches and soft music piping throughout. 

"Is this the kind of thing you've been doing every year?" Mulder asked as they sat down.  “Tree hunting and eating roasted chestnuts?”

"Every year," Scully replied. "But this is our first year coming to this tree farm."

"So, that's Jerrod?" Maggie asked Scully, glancing up at Mulder. 

"The very one," Scully replied in a tone Mulder recognized that said ‘drop it.’

Maggie probably knew that tone as well but as her mother could ignore those tones if she pleased. He also knew that if Maggie pushed, Scully would comply because that was the kind of relationship they had.

Mulder was already almost pouting. She had been grinding against him three mornings ago on her couch and yet he was feeling jealous about some transfer in from California. He didn’t understand why because he was completely certain Jerrod Brinkley didn’t know the ways Scully almost squeaked when she was brought to an orgasm but he was pouting anyway.

As much as they had wanted to continue their personal activities, they were on different stakeout details all week. If Kersh was trying to wear them down from lack of sleep and being overworked, he was getting close.  

"I don't think I've had roasted chestnuts since I was eleven," Mulder offered, hoping desperately to change the subject. He had peeled about ten nuts, shucking the shells onto the floor in a pile like the other customers had done. It made the whole gazebo seem more rustic, he supposed. 

Scully recognized the significance of his memory and put her hand on his. Through their gloved hands, she looped two of her fingers with his. The gesture did not go unnoticed by Maggie, who knew her daughter was not a physically demonstrative person. 

"Are they as good as you remember, Fox?" Maggie asked as she looked up from her daughter and Mulder’s hand to their faces.

"I think so," Mulder replied, chewing on a small bite. 

Scully took one out of the bag and began shucking her own. "Like a sweet potato."

Maggie nodded in agreement. "Earthy."

The hot chocolate was made with hot water and powder, the kind that burned the tongue and singed the esophagus. Mulder made a face and Scully stifled a laugh.

"This is...."

Scully had also taken a drink of her hot chocolate and been unimpressed. "It said 'real hot chocolate' on the sign."

Maggie took a sip of hers and made the same face as her daughter. "That is disappointing."

It wasn't pettiness or maybe it was but he felt delighted that something about Jerrod Brinkley's family business wasn't perfect. They agreed to dump their hot chocolate however as it cooled, it became less difficult to drink, most of it was consumed before they left the gazebo. Typical for disappointing vendor foods when there is no place to properly dispose of it. 

"Dana, can you catch a ride with Fox? I need to go to the grocery store before I head home," Maggie explained.

"Sure thing," Mulder answered for Scully.  

"Good night," Dana said as she kissed her mom and followed Mulder to his car.

As he unlocked her door and held it open for her, Scully watched him carefully. 

"Do you want to come over for a proper hot chocolate?" Scully offered.

The question was innocent but the inflection in her voice made his heart pound.   
   
"Sure," Mulder said, swallowing hard. "I could do that."  
   
***********  
   
Mulder sat in front of Scully's fireplace, building the fire as his father had shown him over twenty-five years ago. She had left him with the matches, kindling and wood while she went to prepare what she called "proper hot chocolate."

The apartment smelled like chocolate and Scully's lingering perfume as though she had sprayed it on right before she left her house earlier that night.

"Whipped cream?" she called from the kitchen and he glanced up to where she was standing with an aerosol can. 

The innuendo left itself lingering in the air. She raised an eyebrow as if to challenge him to say something but he saw a smile playing on her lips. 

"I like whipped cream," he said smiling and noticed a slight flush take over Scully's face. 

When he had the fire going, she returned to the living room carrying a tray with two mugs filled with hot chocolate, the aerosol can of whipped cream, chocolate syrup and mint chocolate pirouettes. It was quite the display of indulgence and Mulder’s hopes suddenly started to rise.

She set the tray on the coffee table and sat next to Mulder on the couch. He took the opportunity to spray the whipped cream on each mug then sprayed a bit into his mouth.

"Sometimes you're like a frat boy," Scully chastised and took the can from him. She sprayed a bit on her finger and before she could lick it off, he deposited her digit into his warm mouth. " _Mulder_."

"Tastes better on you," he said after licking her finger clean.

Usually, she would say that was enough. On any other night she might suggest they drink their cocoa, listen to the music playing softly from her stereo and send him on his way. Something was different tonight. Maybe it was the chestnuts they ate earlier. Maybe it was how he had humoured her mother by trying on many different sweaters on Sunday.

Different things can make you throw caution to the wind. Scully sprayed some on his finger and he watched her fulfill a fantasy of his. She wrapped her tongue around his finger and flicked at the tip of it, releasing it from her mouth with a pop.

Before she could set the can down, he was kissing her, his mouth possessing hers and his body pushing her into the soft cushions of the couch. A leg wrapped around his waist as they continued to kiss and he pushed himself against her. He kissed his way down her throat and she dropped the can on the floor. 

"The hot chocolate," Scully moaned as his teeth nipped at her collarbone. 

He was grateful she chose a boat neck sweater that evening and dipped his tongue into the span of flesh in front of him. A few more kisses and he pulled away slightly looking down at his normally subdued, pulled together partner. A hand slipped under the hem of her sweater and inched it upwards. 

" _God_ , your skin is soft," he sighed as he looked down at her flat belly. He inched his body down and placed a light kiss next to her belly button.  
   
Visibly she shuddered and bit down on her lip. 

"Good?" he asked, looking up at her. 

She nodded, clutching at the cushions. 

"More?" He asked, kissing her there again and watching her react. "God, Scully. I can't believe...."

"Mulder,” she started. “Maybe we should slow down.”

His face was flushed also and he could feel his arousal pressing against her thigh. The sight of her underneath him was something he had fantasized about exactly many times. In not one of those fantasies did she ask him to slow down, to stop or to ask what his intentions were. 

"Okay," he said weakly and breathed heavily into her hip bone before sitting up and taking a spot at the opposite end of the couch. She scooted closer to him and he held up a hand. "You need to give me a minute."   

"I think it's obvious by now we both want this," she said, gesturing between them, her knee brushing his. "I just need to know what else it is that we are doing."

"I love you doesn't clarify that for you?" He asked and she suddenly looked uncomfortable. "You heard me say that, right? I heard you say ‘oh brother’ like you heard me.”

He waited for her to say something. Instead she stared at their cooling drinks. The emotional weight of what he just said was lingering in the air and a pit began to sink in his stomach that maybe she didn’t love him too. Maybe she just liked him, thought he was cute but the in-love part was too heavy.

_That’s just great, Fox. Can’t even read the woman who knows you best._

Mulder picked one of the mugs up and took a long gulp from it. Scully watched him as though he had never drank a beverage in front of her before and the action was fascinating. When he licked his lower lip, she mimicked him and he felt the hardness in his jeans twitch.

"This is good," he said and set his cup down. "So?"

"I-"

"You know, if you want to discuss what we're doing here, Scully, you can't side step around when I tell you I love you," Mulder replied almost bitterly. "Now is the part when you talk too."

"Mulder-" Scully started and shook her head. "If we get the X-Files back, does it stop with us? Would you want to go back to being just friends and partners? I don’t know that you can focus your attentions to the work and to a relationship and I don’t want to set myself up for something I can’t have."

"We haven't been just friends or parters for a long time, Scully," Mulder pointed out and she nodded. "If you don't love me too-"

"I do!" she interrupted and they stared at one another for a beat. "I do love you..." 

"Okay," Mulder replied.

They sat for a moment and smiled stupidly at one another. 

"Okay," they both repeated in unison.

Mulder’s hand reached for hers and she relaxed visibly.

"I just can't rush things," Scully said. "I want to..."

Mulder nodded. "Slow is fine."

Scully looked relieved. Knowing he was okay keeping things slow between them physically seemed to take a huge weight off her shoulders. She scooted closer towards him and picked up her mug. 

With his arm around her, they enjoyed their hot chocolate. The fire began to dwindle out and Mulder knew he had to leave soon. It was a work night after all.

"I should go," Mulder said, standing up.

Scully stood up too. "Okay... Or, you could _stay_..."

They held each others eyes for a beat. 

"Maybe on Friday? After I get back from the church Christmas bizarre," Scully suggested.

Mulder appreciated that idea because he had plotted to stake out his territory that night anyway.

"I want to stay now but it's a school night and I don't have my clothes with me," Mulder explained with a smile. 

Scully nodded. "I understand."

"Scully, I don't think you do. I really want to stay here," Mulder tried to convince her. "I want to share a bed with you for reasons other than emotional destruction, one of us was almost killed or we just saved the other one from a kidnapping. I want to stay so I can sleep next to you and not worry about touching you in the night but actually hold you if you let me."

He was prepared to monologue about all the ways they could have a sleepover without the sex but the look on her face stopped him.

"Then stay," she said and took the tray of empty mugs to the kitchen. Mulder followed her and they smiled at one another again. "I'll set the alarm early."  
   
And he stayed. 


	9. Ugly Sweaters and Santa Suits

  
**Friday, December 11th**  
   
The ninth floor of the Hoover building was bustling with chatter. Agents Pruist and Gillman had been put on temporary suspension for using the FBI to track down a mutual ex-girlfriend. Since they used government resources to spy on her new boyfriend, there was a massive review into every file, every detail of work they had done since joining the bureau eighteen months ago.  
   
Mulder had been a little more than disappointed that it took the surveillance team until Wednesday night to find the blatant misuse of government funds and Kersh spent all of Thursday in review meetings. 

It was easy enough to discover Darren Hills had been getting laid but was without a new lady friend for the weekend due to a family emergency.

As they were following up on the interview notes from Pruist's last case, Mulder sighed from his desk noisily. "Hills having that picture in his living room set off a series of events that has made this week just a giant pain in the ass," he said, turning to her.

The picture in question was Pruist and Gillman’s mutual ex-girlfriend they were stalking through Darren Hills. She was recognized by another agent, someone got curious and the whole thing imploded more slowly than Mulder anticipated. It was a very messy situation the FBI was trying to stop from looking as bad as it was.  
   
Scully had actually closed the file box she was supposed to be sorting through and raised an eyebrow. "Ready to quit?"

"For the week, sure. From the bureau?" His voice trailed off. "Ask me again when they have us on background checks for janitorial staff in government buildings."

"Jerrod reminded me this morning the blood drive is on Monday and I'm signed up to work the entire day," she informed him. "Can you keep yourself out of trouble for that long?"

"Spending the whole day with Agent Brinkley," Mulder noted and tried to remove the tone of disappointment in his voice. 

One would think that at this stage of things, Mulder might not be feeling insecure about another man paying attention to Scully. Perhaps what he was expecting from Scully was a clear-cut 'no thanks, I'm not interested' response when Jerrod Brinkley came around however he hadn't technically asked her out since the first time he asked her out and was being friendly because their mothers were friends.

Mulder was waiting for Brinkley to ask her out again so he could say 'I told you so.'

"It's four-thirty, Scully," Mulder said, nodding his head toward the large analogue clock on the wall. 

Scully’s eyes followed his gaze to the clock and her pink tongue poked out the edge of her mouth as though she was aware of what he was insinuating.

After being partnered together for six years, Scully could tell when he was planning something. Out in the field, when he was about to do something crazy, even when she didn't know what, she knew it was coming. Kicking off work a half hour early wasn't crazy with the amount of overtime they put in when they were in the basement. But here in the bullpen, out in the open when other agents were happy to report on their comings and goings, sometimes taking a chance on leaving early only meant extra work the following week.

Scully's desk phone rang before she could try to talk Mulder out of 'stealing' a half hour of company time. "Scully."

Mulder mouthed, 'who is it?'

"Hi Mom, what's wrong?" Scully fought the office noise and the obvious commotion through the phone. She listened as her mom described a situation and Mulder got a sinking feeling. "Okay, I can be there." Scully glanced over at Mulder and pursed her lips at her mother's request. "I don't know, Mom. I'll see if he's free."

Mulder made a face and Scully placed her hand over the receiver. "Mom needs someone to play Santa and Mrs. Claus."

"At a church toy drive? Isn't that _blasphemous_ for Catholics to recognize?" Mulder scoffed. 

Agent Brinkley approached their desks as Mulder was trying to think of a way to politely say no without hindering his progress with Scully. Wednesday night solidified they loved one another and agreed to take things slowly. What Mulder anticipated for them was more kissing on her couch and keeping their clothes on. To his delight, Scully defined that meant doing everything but the actual act of sexual intercourse. They had only experienced a little of the “everything but” however he was hopeful for more.

"Mom, let me call you back," Scully told her mother and hung up the phone.

"Dana, I hear we're going to be husband and wife," Brinkley greeted. 

Mulder made a face. Their area of the bullpen became suddenly very quiet.

"I'm sorry?" Scully's eyes narrowed but her lips fought against a smile. 

"My mother called and said you were going to be Mrs. Claus at the toy drive," Brinkley said, glancing over at Mulder.

Mulder wasn't exactly hoping to step in as Santa Claus for an evening but they did have plans. They were going to get dinner and hopefully pick up where they left off on Thursday morning which was a lot of dry humping but it was still satisfactory in his mind. Mulder was desperately hoping they would.

"Maggie asked both of us," Mulder piped up.

Purposely, he used Mrs. Scully’s first name like he had a better in with her than Brinkley. He was aware how petty he was being but at the moment there was no helping that. 

"Oh Agent Mulder, we wouldn't want you to go to any extra trouble tonight," Brinkley said and smiled down at Scully. "I'm sure Dana and I can handle it."

Scully looked between Mulder and Agent Brinkley. "Okay." 

"Okay Dana, I'll see you there in an hour?" Brinkley said and patted her on the shoulder.

"Sure, Jerrod," Scully said absently as he left the bullpen. 

The agents around their desks were blatantly watching the exchange, a fact that was not lost on Mulder. He started to log off his computer and regarded Scully cautiously. 

"Are you going to go home?" she asked, shutting her computer down also and Mulder shrugged one shoulder. "Maybe you could come to the toy drive anyway? We wear ugly sweaters after Santa and Mrs. Claus go back to the North Pole and we decorate the tree in the Great Hall."

Mulder glanced around and noticed the agents who were previously watching them with fascination were now only pretending not to listen. If he went home to pout, he would imagine one hundred different ways that Brinkley charmed Scully and her mother while being the perfect Santa.

In Mulder’s mind, this interloper could convince Scully she was a fool for giving Mulder the time of day. While these petulant and self-loathing thoughts entered his mind, he also remembered that Scully described making out with him in her bed as being the highlight of the decade. He playfully countered that since meeting him, she also got to hide out from mothmen in the Florida woods and slow dance to Cher. Scully stroked him through his jeans and kissed him again to make him stop talking.

As he stood up from his desk, Mulder tried to remind himself of that moment and the fact that Scully actually did genuinely like him. So, he put on his big boy pants and agreed to join her at the church.

"Sure," Mulder replied tightly and gathered his jacket and gloves. He held out his hand to escort her out to the elevators. "I shouldn't pass up a chance to see you dressed as Mrs. Claus."

"Got a thing for white-haired women in bonnets?" Scully teased as they walked. 

"You have no idea," Mulder said in a low voice while he rubbed his hand lightly across her lower back, making her flush.

*********

**St. Agustus Parish**  
**Alexandra, Virginia**

The knock on the church classroom door prompted her to call for them to enter. She looked relieved it was Mulder instead of Jerrod or her mother. Since they arrived, neither of them had left her alone and Mulder had the unfortunate acute hearing to know exactly what their motives were. Maggie was trying to force a confession out of her daughter while Jerrod seemed like a pest.  

Scully picked up the wig that accompanied the Mrs. Claus costume and looked at herself in the mirror. The cranberry red dress with long sleeves came to her ankles and cinched at her waist with a white apron and white ruffles at the sleeves. Muttering under her breath as she looked at herself that this could possibly be the most embarrassing thing she had done for the church in years. 

As if Mulder's presence in Maggie's home, picking out trees and at the shopping centre wasn't enough of a declaration, she wanted to know once and for all what was going on with them. As they unfolded chairs in the great hall, Mulder pretended not to hear but deduced that Mrs. Scully was the opposite of Ahab. She wanted the words, not just the gestures. Evidently getting her younger daughter to discuss her feelings was like pulling teeth with tweezers. Over the years, Mulder assumed that the entire Scully home took silence as strength and words such as 'I'm fine' were automatically in Bill and Dana from a young age. Apparently they did not get that trait from their mother.

Scully tried to hide her smile at the sight of Mulder in a bright red sweater with a large yellow bow knitted into the pattern and the words Merry Christmas across the chest. 

"Remind me again why your church wears these?" Mulder asked as he tugged on the rounded collar. 

The material was itchy and it felt hot with his white undershirt on underneath. If he took off the undershirt, the itchiness would increase but with the extra layer he felt like he was roasting.

Scully continued to fight her smile. "It had something to do with knowing who the volunteers were. It started off as a joke among the younger church elders but then became a tradition. Now three ladies from our congregation make new sweaters every year."

The sweater, that fit Mulder lengthwise, was probably fitted for a man with a larger girth and hung oddly on his muscular frame. He continued to push up the sleeves that were determined to roll down.

As openly as she was regarding him, he was studying her. "I like this."

Scully rolled her eyes and scoffed. "Please. I look like those Kindred women in red."

He took a few steps towards her and ran a finger up her arm. "It's a....softer look for you, Scully."

She tucked her chin, raised a shoulder and looked at him carefully. "Are you serious?" 

"Well, it's kind of ... more conservative than your normal church-gear..." Mulder continued to look at her frame. Even in the unimaginative dress, anyone could tell Scully had a knockout figure. Her cheeks were flushed as he appreciated her in such a way in their surroundings. "I like it. Maybe because I have an idea of what's underneath."

Scully tugged him towards her and pressed her lips to his. Foregoing where they were, she decided to kiss him as though her life depended on it. Pushing her against the small desk, Mulder pulled at the hem of the dress, bunching it up in his hands in an attempt to reach her legs. 

"Mulder," she murmured against his mouth. 

"Yeah?" His fingers inched up her thighs, delightfully encountering thigh high stockings. "Miss Scully. This is entirely inappropriate for the wife of Saint Nicholas."

"I didn't have time to go home after work," she defended and pushed on his chest playfully. "I thought you would be seeing them while supper was cooking."

The idea that she had put her stockings on that morning for him to see later turned him on even more. He rubbed his face across her shoulders. "You're killing me."

"Oh don't die yet, I have plans for a certain part of you later," she teased and he groaned. "I really hate to do this to you but I do have to get out there."

His hands stayed where they were on her thighs under her skirt but his head nodded in understanding. 

"Mulder."

Reluctantly, he pulled his hands away and adjusted himself. "I'll meet you out there."  
 

****** ****

  
Mulder was staring at himself in the mirror and shook his head. Of all the crazy, outlandish, impulsive and idiotic things he had done in his life, this was certainly one that questioned his sanity the most. 

Scully knocked on the door to the bathroom and he opened it for her. As much as she tried not to, a small laugh escaped her. 

There, stood her partner of six years, Fox Mulder, dressed as Santa. 

"Mulder, I never thought I would see the day," Scully laughed. 

When Mulder met with Scully in the Great Hall, everyone was staring at him expectantly. Jerrod had been called away to the tree farm when Scully left to get dressed. Without a Santa, the toy drive would be halted. He muttered something about wanting to be the hero, took the Santa suit from Mrs. Scully and left to get changed.

The matching red suit to Scully’s dress fit him well. It came with boot covers, a shiny belt and the proper hat and wig. Mulder worried he would be sweating through it in no time however, standing in the heated bathroom off the Great Hall of St. Augustus Parish, he felt pretty comfortable for the time being. 

"Where's the belly?" Mulder asked, looking around for the padding that came in most Santa suits. 

"I think the last few Santa's we had didn't need it," Scully replied. 

Mulder pulled the wig and beard on and looked at himself in the mirror. "Okay let's get this over with."

Scully reached and pinched his backside.

"Scully!" he cried with surprise and smiled at her in a mix of surprise and delight. 

"Let's go spread some holiday cheer for the church, Mulder," she said and escaped out the door before he could grab her.

Mulder often thought when romance started between them they would fall into bed in one evening. When he fantasized about them being together, he had never imagined it would be a slow start. He thought six years of knowing her and seeing her for everything she was, wanting her for almost as long would finally erupt in a hormone-crazed event of tearing clothes and hot sex. He pictured it a thousand times in hotel rooms, on the road in the backseat of a rental, in the basement office or on his couch. 

After six years, he didn't anticipate them taking things slowly. Of course, they had kissed, touched and teased. He brought her to orgasm in their old office and at her home in her bed Wednesday night. Four times in total but he wasn't exactly counting. 

When he awoke Thursday morning, she had used her mouth and hands to bring him to a state of unbridled rapture before he reluctantly left to change for work.  He didn't want to spend too much time contemplating how she acquired the skills and talent she had but he was grateful nonetheless. She used a firm grip with her hand but not too tight. Her hands felt so much better than his. And her hot mouth and slick tongue knew all the places to pay special attention to.

A woman had never kissed and bitten the tops of his inner thighs before but he knew now it was an erogenous zone. Most women went for the main event, and, while her mouth spent a great deal of time kissing and sucking, she also massaged and teased the nerves around his pelvis. 

He spent all of Thursday in a daze, smiling and staring off into space. During their review meeting with Kersh of their stakeout, he zoned out twice. Mulder had decided he would show Scully his appreciation for her oral gifts until she begged him to stop or his tongue gave out. He had yet to repay the favour.

"Fox, you did a wonderful job as Santa Claus, thank you so much!" Maggie Scully said as she rubbed his forearm. "This was a very successful year."

To be honest, it was not the worst experience he had to endure. Each year, St. Augustus Parish gave the toys and clothing collected during this time to the homeless shelter on the same block. The kids that approached them with gifts were excited and happy. He had anticipated being kicked, screamed at or peed on as well as freezing his ass off or sweating profusely in the suit. Not one child misbehaved around him and the suit felt nice to have on outside the church. He felt worse for Scully, who's dress, wig and bonnet were all she had to protect her against the elements. She had ducked inside the church twice to get Kleenex before Mulder suggested they called it a night for Santa and his wife. 

Father McCue approached them then with a giant smile. "Dana, Jerrod I could not be more grateful to you!"

"Father, Jerrod was called away. This is Fox, Dana's partner from the _FBI_ ," Maggie introduced.

Mulder waved behind the disguise of the Santa suit. Scully was now shivering and he rubbed her arms to warm her up. "Father maybe we could take Mrs. Claus inside."

"Of course!" Father said and held his arm out to Scully to follow him back up the steps of the parish into the church. 

One of the volunteers appeared with a blanket for both of them but Mulder put it around Scully instead. The gesture was not lost on Maggie who gave Mulder a heartwarming smile. A mom’s approval, even if it wasn’t his own mother, felt good to have.  

They were dismissed to leave for the evening and Scully ensured her mother she would be calling her Saturday to help her decorate her tree after her own was delivered. Mulder had big plans between that time, and for a man who rarely planned, he was determined to follow through on this one.

“So, Mulder,” Scully said as she exited the church classroom back in her work attire. She had her jacket on and purse slung over her shoulder as though she was ready for a night out. “Take me home?”

Mulder adjusted the collar on his thick jacket. “Lead the way, G-woman.”


	10. Trees and Bathtubs

**Friday, December 11th**  
**Dana Scully’s Apartment**  
**Georgetown, Washington, D.C.**

  
The fire was warming Scully's apartment nicely and Mulder disappeared somewhere in her bathroom while they waited for their supper to be delivered. Scully was humming in the kitchen as she cleaned up the tea pot from that afternoon. She imagined him looking through through the many bottles of lotions, soaps and oils as an anthropologist might study a foreign culture.

If Mulder was going to compare his pornography collection to anything in her home, it would be the assortment of bottles in her bathroom. Lavender, vanilla, apple spice, tea tree oil, green velvet (whatever the hell that was but she liked it), fruit explosion, apple blossom, honey lemon, cool mint and pink lemonade. The list went on and on. Some bottles had dust on them the same as some of his video collection. Some were almost empty and she made a mental note to purchase more of those the next time she was at Kiehl’s in Georgetown. 

He told her last night that he had a sneaking suspicion she 'enjoyed herself' in the tub like he appreciated 'a good movie' but he also liked to picture her doing those things to herself in her bed. Scully flushed when he asked where she did take liberties with herself and didn’t answer.

"Mulder, what are you doing in there?" she called, approaching from the hallway. When she entered, she looked around at the candles and the bubble bath. 

"I thought we could warm up," he suggested, his face looking a mixture of hope and fear. Scully knew that look. He had that look on his face when he gave her a gift or attempted to bridge any gap from professional to personal. "You hate it?"

Scully shook her head slowly. "What about dinner? The restaurant said they'd be here-"

There was a knock at the door and Mulder darted around her to answer it. She decided since they had tea, enjoyed sandwiches and hot chocolate before decorating the church tree, dinner could wait. The idea of a bath with Mulder was very inviting. Soapy hands on his taught golden skin while kissing him. Turning the tap off, she started undressing down to her underwear and pulled on her robe. 

"Mulder?" She called, coming out of the bedroom. "The water is getting-"

She stopped short seeing a man in a thick plaid jacket and jeans standing in her living room, while Mulder set up the tree stand she had taken out a few days ago. Furniture had been moved and a space had been cleared for the tree in her anticipation of decorating it for the first time with Mulder.  
   
"Hello ma'am," he greeted and gestured towards her tree. "We had to unload some trees a day early."

"Of course," Scully nodded, pulling her robe tighter around herself. Her face felt hot with embarrassment and she suddenly wished she had stayed in the bathroom.

"Mr. Brinkley wanted me to apologize for him for not being able to bring by the tree personally," the young man said as he put the tree into the stand. Mulder tightened the screws and stood up. The young man glanced between Scully and Mulder and his face registered that his boss did not know Scully was not a free woman. He crossed the living room and handed Scully a note. "He said to tell you he would make it up to you Monday."

"Thank you," Scully said quietly and tucked the note into the pocket on her white terrycloth robe. 

Mulder cleared his throat and walked over to the door. "Thank you."

The young man nodded and left the apartment without another word. When the door was closed and latched, Mulder smirked at her.

" _Don't_  start," she said.  
   
"I knew it. I told you so," Mulder gloated. Scully turned on her heel back to the bathroom. Mulder trotted after her and caught up to her in the hallway. "What does the note say?"  
   
Scully pulled it out of her pocket and handed it to him.

" _Dear Dana, I'm sorry I wasn't able to be there tonight. I hope I can make it up to you on Monday_ ," Mulder read. "He signed it with x's and o's Scully!"

She snatched the note from him to see it and handed it back. "I don't care."

"Tell him you're not available," he demanded and followed her back to the bathroom. "Tell him you're not interested."

”I have,” Scully sighed. "I will."

Mulder was amped up but she couldn't identify if it was from Jerrod's insistence and boldness or if was from her lack of commitment. "Scully!"

"Mulder, what do you want me to do?" She asked, sensing as though his feelings of possession were bordering on the edge between adorable and unnecessary. "He didn't ask me out again."

"For the last week and a half he's been extending more than a _professional_ courtesy," he countered. 

Scully made a disapproving face and started walking away. "I'm getting in the tub."

He caught her arm, stopping her. " _I'm not kidding, Scully_."

"Mulder, don't be jealous," she said and tugged her arm from his grip but he held it firm. "Mulder."

"Can you just please tell him?" he asked. Leaning down, he kissed her softly and pulled her into an embrace. Scully opened her mouth to him and allowed him to kiss her deeply. "Tell him you have someone. Don’t say you’re not free. Tell him you’ve got someone already."

"Mulder I think that delivery boy is going to tell him for me," she replied and he smirked. "I don't want to have a potentially uncomfortable conversation with someone because you think he has a little crush."

Mulder kissed her softly again. "I can attest that the feelings for Dana Scully from the male population are never just 'a little crush' and usually leaning towards complete infatuation. Ask Skinner, if you don't believe me."

Scully laughed at the absurdity of their old director having anything more than professional feelings for her. " _Mulder_."

"I've seen the way he looks at you, Scully," he replied with the same expression when he told her about werewolves being real. "He wants you to be more than his subordinate."

"Now you're making it up." Scully said and pushed at him playfully. "Don't tease me."

"Scully, the men around you see your beauty," he said softly. "I wouldn't tease you."

There was another knock at the door and Mulder held up a hand. "Let me get it. You get in the tub."

Scully nodded and headed toward the bathroom with Mulder's words still weighing on her mind. She discarded her robe and climbed into the hot water. 

The burning sensation quickly subsided and she sunk down into the bubbly liquid. The relaxing scents of lavendar and vanilla filled the small room and the ends of her hair were starting to curl, showing their true nature. 

Mulder stepped into the room, having already shed his clothes in the bedroom and slipped in behind her. He let out a low hiss as the hot water hit his skin, a man not used to the feeling of sitting in a hot bath. 

"Feels a lot different than sinking into a hot tub," Mulder said as he allowed his body to adjust.

Scully leaned back against him, enjoying the intimacy of sharing a bath. She ran her hands up and down his legs, tickling the hairs on his thighs and knees. "This is nice." 

Mulder slipped his arm around her waist, pulling her tighter against him. "This is really nice," he agreed and placed a kiss on her temple and rubbed his nose against the back of her neck. "Is this a weekly Scully habit?"

"What?" she asked with a laugh.

"When you're home by yourself, is taking a long bath what you do weekly, every day?" He asked. His thumb was rubbing slow circles on her bare belly and the sensations were going straight to her clit. "What does a week after hours look like for Dana Scully?"

Mulder’s hands were a magical tool of relaxation. She wouldn’t be swayed to talk under a hostage situation but as he worked his fingers over the curves of her breasts and down her belly, she felt like she could confess more to him than she did to her priest.

"You know what I do at home, Mulder," Scully replied, unsure of where he was going. "I come home, I eat dinner, I read JAMA or watch the news, I do laundry and clean my apartment."

Mulder picked up her well-manicured hand from the water and inspected it. "Do you do this yourself?"

"Uh, no sometimes I have to but I go to um, I go to um, a place around the corner from here," she said nervously. She wasn't used to being under the microscope of Mulder's inquisitive eye. Telling him these details felt silly and indulgent somehow. "It depends on what's going on. I have time to get them done at a salon now that we are on desk duty."

"When?" Mulder asked, appreciating her hands and placing a kiss on each of her fingers.

"Sometimes I go on my lunch hour. Um, sometimes I go on Saturdays if you don't call me," Scully replied, suddenly feeling self-conscious. "Why?"

"You know, I feel like I know everything about you but the little things like where you get your nails done," Mulder replied. 

"That's just superficial stuff-" Scully started.

"People in relationships know that stuff," he replied. "I get my haircut at a place on King Street. I go to Craddock Marine Bank.  I have a safety deposit box with my last will and testament in it leaving everything to you and the key is in a lockbox in my apartment."

" _Mulder_ ," she started. 

"You had me sign your DNR notice, Scully," he reminded her. 

"I go to a salon on K Street," she said, relaxing a little. 

They sat in the tub for another thirty minutes, playing tit for tat of information they always wanted to know. Scully agreed it was an excellent exercise in building a different kind of intimacy. He knew her better than anyone and vice versa, but sometimes niblets of information popped up about each other they had filed away under 'learn more later.' He had a million questions but as the water cooled, Scully decided it was time for them to eat supper. 

********

As Mulder ate his penne alfredo with chicken and mushrooms, he watched her twirl the angel hair pasta noodles with sun-dried tomato sauce onto her fork and read through the features section of the paper. Mulder had the sports section folded to the left of his dinner plate but when she joined him at the dinner table in a t-shirt and panties, the paper suddenly was not so interesting. They were enjoying a bottle of red wine and the silence of being with one another. Before last week, if they had been enjoying each other's presence, it would have stripped down versions of their work attire. They'd come a long way in almost two weeks.

The intimacy of being near one another, without work, without the armour of their suits and badges felt like a safe blanket. Being inside her apartment or his, without the watchful eye of the FBI, just being relaxed around him felt more than obvious, it felt right.

"Hey Scully?"

She looked up from the paper, her fork in hand poised near her mouth and raised her eyebrows in question. "Hmm?"

"I....I just wanted to say...." the words stalled in his throat.

He looked as though a confession was on the tip of his tongue but he was afraid to jinx it. The man was perpetually afraid of wrecking what happiness he had and tended to avoid what good could be in his life. When she pointed that out to him their second year in the basement together, he shrugged and said something poignant about being perpetually alone didn’t mean he was lonely as he looked at her with longing. He looked at her like that a lot after she was abducted.

Knowing someone for six years, she could read the look on his face as easily as she read the paper in front of her. She smiled and sat up a little straighter. "Eat up, Mulder, you'll need your strength."

*****

Mulder lay on Scully's bed wearing his boxer shorts and watching her as she paced back and forth in the her room. With the phone up to her ear, she was nodding her head and saying 'of course' and 'hmmm' every once in a while. Mulder reminded her that no one can see you nod on the phone and laughed when she threw a pillow at him with her finger to her lips.

Mulder so obviously enjoyed observing her nightly routines as much as he enjoyed her morning ones. With a fascinated gaze, he watched how she dried her hair when she was half dressed in a tank and panties. He made observances as she did her make up before donning her nylons and suit pants. He noted that the sensible suit jackets were always last to go on with her shoes and outerwear. Allowing these little glimpses into her daily rituals were just as important as the sex. She was so intensely private. 

After about ten minutes of pacing on the phone, she sat down on the bed and crossed her legs.

Father McCue had called when she was getting ready for bed for the night. She had brushed her teeth and was washing her face when her phone rang. Mulder, who had finished his nightly routine of brushing his teeth, had been waiting on the bed, hoping they were going to finally make love. 

Mulder, having obviously decided he had spent enough time waiting for her to get off the phone, put his mischevious nature to good use.

He began by uncrossing Scully's legs gently and pulling them down straight in front of her. Scully gave him a raised eyebrow, questioning his actions but allowed him to move her legs all the same. The silky skin on her legs had been moisturized earlier as she spoke on the phone.  
   
Starting near her toes, he placed a few light kisses on the tops of her feet and near her ankles. Scully smiled down at him and went back to her phone conversation. Whatever was so damn important at 10 p.m. on a Friday night was clearly beyond Mulder's comprehension and making it more and more difficult to focus on Father McCue. 

Slowly, his kisses began to climb up her toned calves. She had foregone her sensible pj's and to his delight, remained in a t-shirt and panties. When he got to her knees, he studied them as if they were so delicate. He was observing the few freckles and a light dust of blonde hair.

Scully pushed on his broad shoulders, his white cotton shirt bunching under her fingers since she wasn't able to move him at all. Mulder looked up at her and grinned, then returned to kissing her knees, inching higher towards her thighs.

With her most serious face, Scully mouthed, 'Stop it.' Mulder would have believed her if she didn't smile at him.

"Father McCue, I will be happy to help with the bake sale. I have some time free tomorrow to make some cookies," Scully piped up, pushing on Mulder's shoulders as he continued to climb her body, pushing her shirt up and toying with the hem on her panties. She slapped his hands away and rolled onto her side away from him. He took the opportunity to kiss her hips and tickle her back.

"Oh of course!" she said a little loudly, flinching as Mulder's fingers slipped under the crotch of her panties and brushed at her labia.

"Father McCue!" Scully practically shouted, as she rolled back toward him and grabbing Mulder's wrist. "I, uh, I'm sorry. I should let you go."  

Scully nodded a few more times and said goodbye. She tossed the phone to the other side of the bed and pushed on his shoulders again. " _Not_ funny."

Mulder placed a few apologetic kisses on her knees and thighs. "Sorry."

"Are you?" she asked in her most serious tone, the left eyebrow making its way up but a smile playing on her lips.

Mulder placed more light kisses on her knees and began tugging her white cotton panties down her slender thighs. 

"No, I'm not," he replied. 

He pulled her up to a sitting position, helped her off with her top and continued to layer kisses over the skin on her belly and up to her breasts. She wanted to kiss him more than anything but she did not want him to stop what he was doing with his mouth to her body. Lips wrapping around a nipple, tongue swirling around while another hand slipped between them to play with her folds.  
   
A squeak passed through her lips and she closed her eyes to allow the sensations to take over. Slow, light touches around her clit, teasing and building her pleasure. So different from her past lovers. He would patiently and appreciatively watch her and hope for her to get there.

"Mulder, stop," she breathed and opened her eyes. A look of worry flashed across his face and she touched his cheek tenderly. "I want you inside me when I-" 

Mulder sat up from her abruptly and took off his shirt. "Okay."

He pulled his boxers down and off, all while kneeling, and Scully wondered if men knew how to do that the same way women could take their bra off without removing their shirts. 

"Something funny?" Mulder asked as he looked down at himself and to her. His cock was fully erect, hard and red. It pointed at her like an arrow on a compass and she was his true north and she smiled again. "Something about this _amusing_ to you?"

Scully shook her head and pulled him down towards her. "Not at all."

Mulder kissed her fully on the mouth and they allowed their bodies to press against one another. His firm stomach, his warm skin, the hairs on his chest tickling her breast was all encompassing. She felt safe underneath him and above all else, loved. Yet, a strange feeling overtook her, to be underneath him in this way as they took the last step in their relationship. 

He must have felt her tense or a change in her body because Mulder stopped kissing her. "No good?" 

"No, it's fine," Scully reassured him and kissed him again, rubbing her slick folds against the head of his penis.

"Fine is a four letter word," Mulder reminded her and kissed her temple softly. "Does this position not work for you?"

"Not generally... uh being in this position-"

Mulder rolled onto his back and pulled her on top of him, laying with their bodies and his swollen manhood between them, he felt heavenly under her body. 

"You were saying?" he prompted.

Clearly if she needed to be on top the first time, he was fine with that. He was more than fine with that. 

Scully sat up and straddled him, her sex rubbing against his and smiled. "Better."

Mulder propped himself up on his elbows to watch her as she sank down slowly onto him. If they hadn't previously spent time in the bath together, if she wasn't anticipating this for the last few years and building towards it the last two weeks, she would have needed more foreplay, more kissing and touching. But she didn't need that tonight. 

Her body felt a fullness, a stretching and a bit of pain for the first time in years. The unfamiliar sensation of being penetrated by a man, wide but not too much but longer than her previous lovers. She shifted and allowed her body to relax around his. They held eyes for a moment, knowing this new step for them was momentous. 

Mulder looked down at her and dovetailed his fingers with hers. "Good?" 

Scully nodded and bit her lip, the sting subsiding but still present. She swallowed hard and shifted her body. "Very good." 

Slowly she began to rise and fall with her hips, allowing his cock to penetrate her at her pace. Every few thrusts, he would raise his hips to thrust more deeply into her and she could feel the head of his penis hit her cervix.

"Oh God," she moaned. His hand released hers and travelled to her centre, restarting the slow, light touches her body responded to. " _Oh God_!"

Her sex began to swell and tighten as her orgasm approached and Mulder continued to focus on only her and what she needed. She was grateful for his attentions and knew that their their first time making love, fucking, having sex would not be benchmarked by him coming first. 

_Please dear God do not let him come first._

His other hand reached up to massage her breast and pinch her nipple. He watched her touch herself that way as she had given him the best oral sex of his life. Those were his exact words as she had taken him into her mouth and tasted the saltiness of him.

 _Please_ dear _God let me come._

Her pace started to become erratic as she neared her release. She ground her pelvis into his, shouted and tensed above him. The firing neurones inside her body felt like a wave and a rush as it took over and she felt her orgasm everywhere.

As soon as he could tell it was finished, she slapped his hands away from her and held onto them firmly. "Don't touch me for a second."

Mulder, who was still fully erect and in the game, nodded. 

"Just.... wow." 

"That was as amazing to watch as it was to experience, let me tell you," he replied, his voice low with arousal. 

Scully smirked at him and fanned herself, her chest and neck flush. "I can assure you it was most definitely more fun for me."

Mulder thrust his hips up gently and her eyes widened.

" _Oh_!"

"Yeah," he smiled and before she knew it, without leaving her body, he was on top of her and thrusting.

The aftershocks of her orgasm still left her body tingling and Mulder buried his face in her neck for a moment, breathing in the scent of their sex. 

"Fuck, _Scullyyyyy_ ," Mulder groaned and lifted his head. They stared into one another’s eyes again and he kissed her hard while his hips continued to move. 

She ran her hands up his back and dug her fingernails into his smooth skin, enjoying the feeling of him moving inside of her. It was better than she had imagined it. She had six years of knowing him to wonder what it would be like. This was better and she had the fleeting thought to tell him.

The sensations were building inside of her and she could feel the pressure of another orgasm approaching. Reaching between them, she found the bundle of nerves at her centre and Mulder's face took on a look of shock and joy.

"I wanna... Fuck Scully I want to watch you do that but...." Mulder closed his eyes and buried his face in her neck, continuing his pace. 

She could feel herself getting close and a cross between a grunt and a moan escaped her lips as suddenly he thrust into her hard. He looped his left arm under her right leg, while pulling her pelvis more towards him. The angle changed and she continued moving her middle finger back and forth across her centre. 

As she was starting to tumble off the edge of ecstasy, she could feel him tense and he cried out. " _God_!"

Mulder panted above her, his arms shaking from the aftershocks of his release and he moved his arm to allow Scully to straighten her leg. She wrapped them both around his waist and pulled him towards her. 

"Hi," he said and kissed her lips softly.

"Hi," she replied and searched his face.  
   
Aside from happy, aside from relaxed and the feeling of him inside her, she didn't feel any different and it was a good thing. Part of her had worried stepping across this line would change too much for them and she wasn't ready for it. They were still the same, just better. 

The eventual withdrawal from her body would happen and they would go to sleep for the night. Tomorrow Scully would bake cookies and decorate her tree. But for that moment, they were still joined, their bodies smelling like the lavender bath oils, sweat and sex. 

"I love you," he breathed into her neck and kissed her lips again. 

Scully smiled at him and kissed him again. "I love you too, Mulder."


	11. Cookies, Shampoo and Snowshoes

**Saturday, December 12**  
**Dana Scully’s Apartment**  
**Georgetown, Washington**

 

Mulder woke up in the morning, surrounded in the soft sheets of Dana Scully's bed. The scent of baking cookies and coffee wafted into the bedroom. When he glanced over at the clock, it read eight a.m. and sun shone through the windows of Scully's bedroom. He could hear the slow traffic moving on the streets of Georgetown and a familiar humming from the kitchen to his left.  
   
In the last five years, he could count on one hand the number of times he had slept that long. Usually it was after a crazy, foolhardy and reckless antic that almost cost him his life and waking up to find Scully by his bedside in a military base, an out of the way hotel room or a hospital. Sometimes he woke up on Scully's couch or in her spare bedroom to the smell of coffee brewing and an all-business attitude from both of them to assuage any feelings of awkwardness.

Earlier this week, after their first sleepover, he woke up first to find them sharing the same pillow, his. Scully explained since she normally had the bed to herself, she often drifted over to the middle but Mulder teased her about being a closeted snuggler to which he was pinched sharply in his side and watched her cheeks flush. 

He made his way to the bathroom to relieve himself, brush his teeth and wash his face quickly with water. Next, he donned a T-shirt and a pair of sweats he left there two years ago. He could tell they were freshly washed from the scent of the fabric softener Scully used. He smelled like her sheets, sleep and sex. 

As he padded his way to the kitchen, he found Scully in a T-shirt and a pair of her sensible flannel pyjama pants, drinking coffee and spooning cookie dough onto a baking sheet.

"Where am I and what have you done with Dana Scully?" Mulder said, looking around at the ingredients on the table. 

She had a smudge of flour on her cheekbone and the bag of chocolate chips looked as though she had been snacking on them. She smiled and continued to spoon the chocolate chip cookies onto the baking sheet. 

"I didn't want to hurt your ego, Mulder, but I have something to confess," she said and turned around to face him as he approached her at the counter. The spoon from the cookies was in her right hand and she licked her lips nervously. 

Mulder suddenly felt really worried. Maybe she was going to tell him she faked it last night but from what it felt like inside of her, that would have been some damn good acting. Maybe she was going to tell him she wasn't ready for this to go any further. Maybe she was going to tell him her brother Bill was on his way over here and he’d better run.

"What is it, Scully?" 

She set the spoon down and ran her hands up and down his biceps reassuringly. "I didn't want to tell you this while we were working in the basement because of so many reasons. We aren't on the X-Files anymore and since we were together last night you should know... "

Mulder held his breath for what he anticipated would be bad news.

"I am an excellent baker," she said, keeping her face serious. "Cookies, breads, cakes.... You name it, I can bake it."

Mulder laughed and scooped her up, setting her down on the counter. "Is that so? Dana Scully bakes?"

Scully nodded solemnly and licked her lower lip again. "You have to understand my apprehension for telling you. It's a man's world at the FBI and I'm a serious scientist. But it is in my blood. My mother, my grandmother, even my great aunt Olive."

Mulder nodded seriously. "I understand."

"I hope you can still respect me," she said, trying to hide her smile while toying with the edge of his white cotton T-shirt. ”Those brownies at my mother’s were just the tip of the baking iceberg.”

"I don't know Scully, after the sex and finding out this little tidbit about you... I just don't think I could," Mulder teased and flinched when she pinched him in the side. They shared a laugh and he kissed her forehead gently. "You never mentioned baking last night in the tub."

Scully shrugged and wrapped her legs around Mulder's waist, pulling him tighter towards her.  
   
" _Hello_."

"Forgive me?" Scully asked playfully. 

This was the side Mulder felt like only few men had been privy to see. The playful, sexual side of Dana Scully. The side that did domestic things like bake cookies, take long baths and discuss the turnover of employees at her favourite salon. He knew everything about her except for that side. 

Mulder took a bite of the moist, warm cookie and his eyes widened. 

"Holy shit," he said through a mouthful of chocolate and gooey dough. He chewed and swallowed before his next statement. "Scully, these are good!"

She looked around at the kitchen, calculating what she still needed to accomplish. "I have about five dozen left to make and ten minutes left on this timer. I should be done before lunch."

"Ten minutes?" He asked with a leer and she half-smiled, half-pursed her lips together. "I could do a lot in ten minutes."

Mulder kissed her softly on the lips and felt delighted when her mouth opened to him. Her soft tongue swirled around his and she ground herself into his blossoming erection. One large hand travelled up her belly to her bare breast under her T-shirt and the other wrapped around what he could reach, under her soft flannel pants, to a bare backside.

"Miss Scully, _where_ are your underpants?" he asked, looking down at her crotch that was now one layer closer to his dick. 

She sat up a little straighter but his hand stayed firmly on her breast, her hardened nipple brushing against the palm of his hand. "I don't know if you remember this or not, Mulder, but after sexual intercourse, without a prophylactic, there is physical evidence that can remain inside the-"

Mulder kissed her on the lips and began an inventory of her mouth, not wanting to hear the scientific explanation about cum in her panties. Since how he had cut her off was servicing them both, Scully kissed him back and scratched her manicured nails up his back, under his shirt. They continued to paw and claw at one another until they were successfully dry humping in her kitchen, in their pj’s.

"Bedroom?" Scully suggested. 

Mulder shook his head and began tugging at her pants. She lifted her bottom to assist him and he pulled them down off her legs, chucking them towards the fridge. 

Looking down at the neatly trimmed auburn curls, he made a mental note at the two shades lighter between her head and at her sex. "A natural redhead."

Scully groaned until he slipped a skilled finger inside of her and the sound she emanated went from reacting to the bad joke into a moan of pleasure.

"Fuck, you're so tight, even around my finger," he groaned as he moved it in and out of her tight walls.

Scully blushed even further. 

This was new to them, the sexual relationship. For all their chemistry, for all of the passion between them, hearing her moan or comment on his physical attributes excited him to no end. No matter how long he had known Scully before, the first night he went down on her and hearing from her mouth how good it felt was more intimate and intense than anything they had shared before. He knew why. This was the last step for them. The sex was the only thing they didn't have.

A fleeting thought must have passed through her brain and showed on her face. "You don't have the X-Files."

Mulder looked at her face. "Hey, come back."

Scully nodded and kissed him again. They could think about their reassignment, how things would change once they were back in the basement later. Until then, he had a long finger inside of her, pushing on the front wall of her canal, searching for something, rubbing and pushing.

"Holy _fuck_!" she cried out as she was coming.

It appeared sudden and overwhelming but she was flush and gorgeous as she rode it out. 

"There it is," he said.

Quickly, he shed his pants and he pushed inside of her, thrusting while she rode out her orgasm. 

She had to hold onto him and the counter to keep from falling, while he stretched her walls to accommodate his larger than average size member. Scully told him over the years in an awkward conversation during a case that the average length of an erect penis was between five and six inches. Mulder was at least seven. Not being a tall woman, with narrow hips, Scully was more on the small side. They had to work to fit with one another. As was with everything, the results were beneficial to an outcome that suited them both. In a good way.

Scully was brilliant and she pushed his mind to work harder to prove himself than anyone else. During their work, their bodies had been pushed to ultimate limits. And now they found that the sex was more intense than either of them had experienced before. He knew it was because the love was mutual as the deep respect he had for her. In his entire life, she was the only person that had stuck around to the degree she had.

After the first night together, they had a long conversation about what they liked and didn’t like. It was a roundabout way to avoid embarrassment in the future. Scully told him that mental side of any sexual act could always distract her from enjoying it. If she started thinking too much, her body would stop building towards the next orgasm and simply pray for an end. After he had given her four orgasms with his mouth and hands, she assured him that too was different with them. Knowing how much she loved him, her mind working on why, her body began to tense and her excitement heighten. 

"Scully," he moaned and kissed her.

She maneuvered her hand between them, hopeful to climb towards another release with him. Mulder stilled to watch her and he groaned at the sight of her pleasuring herself while he was inside of her. For the rest of his life, if nothing else happened between them, his photographic memory would have that to hold on to.

They continued to move against one another as the smell of vanilla filled the kitchen. He could taste the chocolate on her mouth and a hint of the coffee that brewed adjacent to her mixing bowl.  
   
He thrust one last time inside of her, grinding his pelvis into and against her clit. As he came, so did she and she tried to continue kissing him but her lungs needed air. He stayed inside of her as long as he could but his shrinking penis and the cool air around him in the apartment forced him to move.  
   
The timer started to buzz as Scully hopped down from the counter, picked up her pants and headed toward the bathroom. Mulder, who had nothing on below the waist, pulled his boxers and pants up.

"Could you get that, Mulder?" She called over her shoulder.

Mulder looked for the timer button on the stove, hit what he hoped was the cancel button and pulled some beautiful looking cookies from the oven. He left the oven on and headed to the bathroom where Scully was turning on the shower. "If you give me a minute, I can put more cookies in and we can shower."

Mulder nodded and looked around the bathroom. "I should head back to my place at some point in the day. Get some clean clothes."

Scully padded her way back to the kitchen and he heard her humming as she finished putting the next batch into the oven. When she returned to the bathroom, Mulder was sitting on the toilet seat with his pants in his hand, the steam quickly filling the small room.

"What are you doing?" She asked.

"Well, I was just thinking, how is this going to work?" 

Scully took off her shirt and pants, tossing them in the hamper. "How is what going to work?"

Mulder stood and undressed also but left his clothes on the edge of the tub. "Well... I mean us? How much do you want to see me?" 

Scully stepped into the shower and held the door for him. He climbed in after her and watched her carefully wet her head and face before reaching for the shampoo.

"Scully?"

She sighed as she began to lather up her hair while Mulder stood close to her, watching her daily ritual. "What do you want me to say?"

"Well... I just don't want to overstay my welcome," he admitted. "I know you like your downtime."

Scully scrubbed at her scalp and peeked one eye open at him before closing it. He nudged her fingers aside and began massaging her head and she moaned. 

"You could get a second job working as the shampoo boy at my salon," she complimented as he helped rinse out the tea tree oil and lavender scented shampoo. 

Mulder placed a kiss on her bare shoulder. "I hope the uniform is similar to this one."

Scully turned around to face him in the shower and ran a hand through her hair. "On second thought, maybe I will keep you to myself."

Mulder smiled and began lathering his own hair. "I'm going to smell like a girl today."

Scully smiled. "That's a nice hint to other women you've got someone."

Mulder stopped mid shampoo. "That's funny coming from the woman getting hand-written notes with a tree delivered."

Scully looked up at him as she lathered her body quickly. "The last time I took a note seriously that was passed through a third person, I was in middle school." 

"What about high school?" Mulder asked. 

Scully squirted a small amount of conditioner into her hair and shrugged. "Most of the boys in high school just asked me out face to face and then I met Markus."

"Who's that?" Mulder rinsed his hair out and glanced down at her. "High school sweetheart?"

Scully nodded and rinsed her hair. "I should check on the cookies."

She stepped out of the shower, donned her robe and left Mulder in the shower to contemplate their conversation.

When he joined her again, she was in her robe while he stood there in last night's clothing.

"I don't want to keep you from your day," Mulder said reluctantly, looking around the kitchen at her baking. 

She wiped her hands on a towel and tossed it back near the side of the sink. He made a mental note that baking Scully was not as meticulous as every day Scully that hung towels up on the rack after using them and got flour on her face. 

Scully followed him to the door silently and gave him a small smile. "So, I'll see you Monday?"

Mulder nodded, feeling slightly rejected. He anticipated if he ever managed to get the very serious Dr. Dana Katherine Scully into bed and penetrate her, he wouldn't leave until the next millennium. He wanted the weekend at least.

Mulder kissed her softly on the lips and she gave him a gentle hug before opening her door and waving her goodbyes. 

  
   
******

As he drove to his apartment, he felt slightly jilted and angry that he was going to be alone for the rest of the weekend. He couldn't go into work and bury himself in research. On their current desk duty, Mulder was going to be the last one to volunteer for any extra hours. The bullpen, as far as he was concerned, did not exist on his off-hours. A.D. Kersh was not going to get any extra work out of Fox Mulder unless it was actually related to an X-File.

He went to his room to change and tossed his clothing in his overflowing hamper. After doing a load of laundry, eating a bowl of cereal and drinking half a pot of coffee, Mulder decided spending the day at his apartment was not going to help his mood at all. 

He decided to head over to the Lone Gunmen because if they were good at anything, it would be their ability to temporarily distract him. 

After the usual production of being let into their office/apartment/dungeon, Mulder thanked Langly and sat down heavily on their couch. Langly looked around the quiet alley for a moment before closing the thick door.  
   
Langly looked at Mulder warily and leaned against the tall metal table across from him.

"What are you guys up to?" Mulder asked, picking a piece of lint off his faded jeans. 

Langly merely regarded his friend of almost ten years as he was slowly piecing together the scenario before him.

Frohike came bounding out of the back area with a pair of snowshoes in hand. "Greetings."

"Hey," Mulder said. He nodded towards the sports equipment. "Taking up a new hobby?"

"I told your delicious partner I would take her next time it snowed and there is some fresh powder out there, boys," Frohike said as he showed off two sets of similar sized snowshoes. "Where is the _tasty_ Agent Scully, this afternoon?"

Langly nodded toward Mulder. "He's here alone."

"No way man, I can smell Scully's shampoo and conditioner," Frohike said and put the snowshoes down on the table.

Mulder gave Frohike a worried yet confused look and stood up from the couch.  He was about to offer his explanation of her absence when Langly said, "She's not here, Dude. You'll have to find a way to lure Scully into the woods another time."

"Hey paisan, she _asked_ to go," Frohike defended and looked around the office again. "I can smell her shampoo."

"You shouldn't keep repeating that," Mulder advised and walked by his short statured friend to get a beer from the fridge. "She's not going to come over here anymore if she knows you know what she smells like."

"If you were more of a refined man with skills such as myself, you would notice those things," Frohike defended. "Wait a second!"

Mulder took two steps away from Frohike as he took a swig of his beer. 

" _You_!" Frohike extended a finger on his fingerless leather gloves at Mulder, who shrugged one shoulder uncomfortably in his grey T-shirt. 

"What?" Mulder tried to shrug off the guys but now Frohike was following him around the lair. "What?"

"You smell like Scully," Langly reminded him. "You smell like her so much Frohike ran from the back."

Frohike put his hands on his hips. "I didn't run!"

"You brought snowshoes," Mulder pointed out.

"You smell like Scully," Frohike countered. 

Byers emerged from the back and looked around. "Where's Scully?"

"She's baking cookies for her church," Mulder said exasperated and took another swig of his beer. "Don't you guys have anything on the go right now?"

Byers looked around and sniffed. "I can smell her. That's so strange."

Byers, Langly and Frohike all stared at Mulder expectantly and he sighed heavily.

"I showered at her place," Mulder said and ran his boot along the leg of the table. 

"Yeah?" Frohike prompted.

"I slept there last night," Mulder replied with a shrug.

"On the couch?" Langly asked, knowing by the way that Mulder was behaving that was definitely not the case. "You finally get to know Scully in the biblical way?"

Mulder groaned and walked away from where he stood and the end of the table.

"I hope when you're in a meeting with Skinner you have a better poker face!" Langly said with a laugh.

"You know Mulder, you don't have to tell us," Byers piped up and Langly swatted him across his arm. 

"Hey!" Byers rubbed his arm and he and Langly exchanged a look. 

"Fellas, a gentleman never kisses and tells," Mulder says. 

The absence of confirmation or denial was enough of an indicator for them and Langly held out his hands toward Frohike and Byers. They each deposited $10 into Langly's outstretched palms and he laughed. "Thank you."

Mulder looked between his friends. "Seriously? You guys had _money_ on this?"

"Ten bucks too, that's not a small wager around here," Frohike said as he put his wallet back in his pocket. "I didn't think you two would get together until you got the X-Files back. Or there would be a lot of booze involved."

Mulder finished his beer and deposited the bottle on the metal table. "I won't get into specifics because if Scully knew I was having this conversation, she would have me peeing through a catheter. So, I will just say that no one was drunk."

"You lucky _bastard_ ," Frohike said, shaking his head in disbelief. 

“If you and Scully finally… did it,” Byers started awkwardly. “What are you doing here?”

"Can we move on?" Mulder asked, putting his hands on his hips. If this conversation was repeated to Scully, he wanted to above all remain as vague and uninformative as possible. 

Langly moved over to his computer. "Sure, want to see how I hacked into the Aetna Medical to see who they were over billing?"  
 

********

When Mulder unlocked his front door that evening, he was alarmed to find the lights on and a little more concerned to see a small mound, huddled under a blanket on his couch. He set his keys quietly on the table by the door and walked into the living room toward the figure. As he closed in, he saw fiery red hair that stuck out from the top of the quilt and he smiled. Mulder perched himself on the couch next to her hip and she stirred slightly. Gently, he brushed her hair back from her face and she slowly opened her eyes. 

"What time is it?" Scully asked, not moving from under the blanket.

"Almost nine-thirty," he replied softly running his hand from her head down to her arm then to rest on her hip. They were lovers now and he could take liberties in the privacy of his own home to touch her intimately. "How long have you been here?"

Scully yawned and drew a small circle with her finger on the inside of the knee of his jeans. It made his dick stir and he tried to focus on brushing his thumb back and forth on her hip instead of how she was gnawing on her lower lip. "Maybe half an hour."

"I thought-" 

"I missed you," she said and looked up into his eyes. 

If he hadn't stubbed his toe on the new waterbed bed frame this morning when he was getting dressed, he would not have believed this was an actual conversation he was having with Dana Scully, the queen of locked-up feelings and lesser said words.

Mulder smiled slowly. "Really?"

Scully started to sit up so he reluctantly moved his hand from her hip to her knee under the blanket. "Yeah. I was busy today, you know. I baked cookies and wrapped my gifts but I... I missed you."

"I was at the Gunmen's," he explained. "I thought you didn't want to see me until Monday."  
   
"Mulder, I have never been very good at sharing my space, even when I lived with someone... It was a long time ago but I was bad at it," she explained and took his hand in hers. "Maybe sharing a room with Melissa for so many years made me territorial about my home... But I can't tell you how quickly the solace I usually find in my apartment turned into an uneasy loneliness."

Mulder felt floored. This was a huge admission for her and he wasn't sure whether to jump for joy that his presence was wanted or that she actually admitted it to him. 

"I don't know how to make this work if we are always at my place," she continued. "I know that might seem-"

"We can sleep here tonight," he offered.

"Mulder, you don't have a bed," she pointed out and he nodded. "When did you get a bed?"

"When we got back from Area 51, I thought it was the Gunmen playing a prank but they've denied it adamantly," Mulder said and stood up extending a hand. He now noticed Scully's overnight bag on the armchair across from him and his heart leapt a little. "Come look."

Scully took his hand and followed him to the bedroom, feeling a slight sense of deja vu. "Is that a _waterbed_ , Mulder?"

"It's actually not bad for the back, you know, Scully," he said, feeling slightly more than embarrassed. 

Scully smiled. "Okay but I'm _not_ having sex on that thing."

Mulder laughed and pulled her further into the bedroom, kicking the door closed behind him. “You should have seen it in here before. The tacky mirrors on the ceiling and leopard print sheets.”

“Too bad you took out the mirrors,” she teased and his face lit up for a moment until he realized she was teasing. “Sorry! That’s not fair.”

“Not at all.”


	12. Tuxedos, Gowns, an FBI Christmas Ball

**Friday, December 18th**  
**The St. Regis,**  
**Washington, D.C**.

Of all the mandatory events Mulder and Scully had been wrangled into attending, the Winter Ball the FBI threw every year had never been one of them. On the cab ride Friday night to the St. Regis Hotel, Scully had time to contemplate how she had avoided such an event over the last six years.

During their first year of partnership, the ‘invitation’ arrived at the basement office with the stack of mail. Before Mulder could say anything, Scully said she’d rather go back to the icy cape with ear worms and all before putting on a ball gown and sipping on watered down drinks during the holidays. Mulder immediately replied that he thought she appreciated the holidays and while that was true, she also felt wildly out of place during large crowds of forced social situations. It was the first time Mulder asked her to marry him as a joke. Scully remembered how she quickly said “ _no thank you_ ” and made her final request for a good case to take them away from Washington the same weekend as the Winter Ball.

Their second year working together, Scully had been the one that caught the case that took them to Worcester, Massachusetts. The case with the patients at Excelsis Dei and Michelle Charters’ rape was more convoluted than either of them originally thought. Thankfully they arrived back in D.C. well after the Ball started and their attendance was excused.

The third year they were working together, Skinner handed Scully the invitation during her monthly debriefing on the X-Files progress. He told her he was well aware that Mulder was looking for something to get them out of it. He offered to turn down their Travel 302 if Scully wanted to attend the ball and her cheeks flushed as she tried to assure Skinner the death of the evangelist was her top priority also.

By the fourth year of their partnership, Skinner had Mulder and Scully both in front of him as they presented their findings that morning in the forest related to John Lee Roche. He tapped the invitation on his desk and told them if they didn’t attend this year, they would be signed up for the next Communications in Partnership Conference. Mulder scoffed but Skinner made good on his word the next year. Mulder was more than grateful for mothmen getting them out of that.

When the invitation was dropped on Scully’s desk Monday morning, Mulder had immediately snatched it up with the pile of new background checks. “What’s this?”

The mailroom clerk with his cart looked at Mulder as though he had grown a third head and while Scully was used to that look from fellow agents, Mulder hardly noticed.

“The Winter Ball?” the clerk asked Mulder. “Every agent above a junior level gets one of these. Where have you been, the moon?”

Mulder smirked. “More like the basement.”

“Mandatory attendance,” the clerk said, tapping the invitation with another letter marked for A.D. Kersh. “Better get out your finest duds.”

“Wait. Why is it mandatory?” Mulder asked. “Who cares if we’re there?”

“The executive and associate directors along with politicians gather to congratulate themselves on another year of crime fighting,” the clerk told him. “Are you serious?”

“Skinner mentioned to me once or twice that our lack of participation looked bad on him,” Scully replied quietly to Mulder. “Under Kersh’s purview, I doubt we’d be able to come up with another excuse not to go.”

“Kersh? Yeah good luck there,” the clerk muttered and Mulder made a ‘thank you very much’ face.

The clerk left them to finish his delivery route and Scully glanced over her shoulder to watch the other agents in their bullpen read over their invitations.

“The FBI Winter Ball,” Mulder read as he sat on the edge of Scully’s desk.

She tried to focus on the screen in front of her but her cheeks were burning. She cleared her throat and pushed on his leg to get the next file out in front of her. “Yes.”

“You wanna go?” he asked and she looked up to his eyes to see a gleam of hope. He cleared his throat and laughed nervously. “With me?”

The bullpen felt eerily quiet and she wondered if everyone completely halted their movements to eavesdrop at what Scully’s answer might be. If he wanted to ask her to this, why didn’t he just ask during lunch or later that night when they were at the hockey game? She pulled a file from under his leg and tried to open it but his large hand closed the file across her keyboard.

“Um…” Scully hesitated and she looked up to see a look of panic cross his face. She couldn’t be too outright or affectionate to ease his worry since they were at work. “Are you asking if I want to go with you or if I’ll go with you like a date?”

Mulder chuffed. “Should I go down on one knee?”

“Don’t you dare, Fox Mulder,” she whispered and slapped his leg with the file she was holding.

“Okay, okay.” He laughed and held his hands up. “Will you go with me?”

She ran her tongue along her upper lip and glanced up at him, feeling nervous. “I’ve already been asked…”

“You’re kidding,” he whispered and she saw his face fall. “Jerrod?”

Her face broke and she burst into a fit of giggles that was uncharacteristic for her in their work hours but teasing Mulder brought that side out to her. “I had you big time.”

Mulder stood up from her desk and looked around the bullpen as he was trying to ascertain if Scully had really played a joke on him at work.

“Wait… What?”

“Of course I’ll go with you,” she said with a laugh and pulled his hand down to sit him back on the edge of her desk again.

Mulder gave her a look like he wanted to grab her and give her a little payback she might not entirely appreciate. She laughed and he was still grumbling about being had when he sat down at his desk.

Scully left Mulder to fend for himself during lunch all week while she searched for a dress. He used one of their lunch breaks to rent a tuxedo while she searched for a gown that would fit her small frame. After work on Wednesday, still without a dress, a feeling of panic began to set in as she worried she wouldn’t have the right thing to wear. It was as she was driving past a bridal shop in Georgetown when she thought she might check inside there. These types of shops usually carried petites and did alterations on site if there were any issues with length. It was there she found a Betsy & Adam gown in her size.

As she sat in the back of the cab outside the St. Regis, she looked around the outside of the hotel for Mulder. The small handbag didn’t allow for much beyond the essentials such as makeup, house keys, money and her badge.

Just when she worried she might have to wait for his perpetually late self, she spotted him standing under the awning with the valets as her cab waited to pull up to him.

“That will be $17 dollars, ma’am,” the cabbie told her and she handed him one of her neatly folded twenties in her clutch.

Mulder opened her door for her as she scooped the dress in her hand to carefully put one foot on the cement below her. As he held his hand to her and she exited the cab, she had a feeling like this night was full of possibilities. Dana Scully wasn’t a romantic but there were times with Mulder that he brought that out in her.

As she stood up, he kissed her cheek and gave her a quick once-over glance to try to see what she was hiding underneath her wrap.

“Shall we?” he said, extending his arm.

Scully took it but glanced up at him skeptically. “Who are you and what have you done with Fox Mulder?”

“Four years of prep school in Massachusetts didn’t have mandatory etiquette and dance lessons?” Mulder asked and her jaw dropped. “Wait till you see my waltz.”

“Oh you know me, Mulder,” Scully said as they walked into the St. Regis where a crowd of their fellow agents were mingling with politicians. “I need to see it to believe it.”

“Put me on your dance card,” Mulder whispered in a low tone that went to her belly. “I know how to turn from one eighth to three quarters.”

She stared straight ahead and held the bottom of her dress as they walked past the lobby. She had curled her hair for the evening, put on a darker shade of lipstick and eyeshadow. She felt like a fake and a phony being so dolled up for an evening. That being said, walking among the other female agents and wives of executives in similar gowns with the same preparation, she didn’t stand out in the least. Her anxiety quelled and she realized she had picked the right dress.

“Coat check is over there,” Mulder offered and she realized he probably showed up with a scarf and jacket looking like Clark Gabel or Cary Grant. She tried not to feel disappointed she missed seeing that. “We should hang your wrap.”

Scully knew what Mulder’s end game was. Take off the wrap and see the gown he had been asking about since he saw the dress bag in her closet Thursday night. She gave him a look but followed him across the lobby to where the coat check was waiting adjacent to the ball room.

When they arrived at the coat check window, Scully handed Mulder her champagne coloured clutch and carefully took off the matching stole from around her shoulders. She handed the wrap to the young man behind the desk and she glanced over to see Mulder’s jaw now slack as he took in her appearance.

The accents on her dress matched the clutch, her shoes and her wrap in an attempt not to get too wild with colour. Her bracelet, earrings and necklace were the same gold that glimmered in the stitching of her handbag.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathed.

Scully looked down at the fitted halter dress and smoothed one hand along her front of the bandage style material. “Is it all right?”

Suddenly she felt worried. The neckline of the deep blue gown dipped down her chest and above her cleavage, however the low back didn’t allow for a bra underneath. The underwear she was recommended to wear was to decrease panty lines and therefore, she felt the most naked in this gown that was supposed to be worn around her boss. The rebellious side of Dana Scully appreciated that she was wearing so little but there was another side of her that told her propriety at such events was a must.

“You look…” he started but his words left him and he shook his head. “I mean… I should have taken you to one of these things years ago.”

The look on Mulder’s face washed away a lot of her fears and she smiled at him. She offered, “Good?”

“That word doesn’t do this dress justice but we can say good,” he managed.

Scully reached down to the hemline of her dress and found the wrist loop to make walking in a floor-length gown easier. She gave Mulder a look and he extended his arm to her.

“Are you going to hold my bag all night?” she asked as she took the ticket from the clerk.

He held the bag up to his chest. “I think it goes with my tux, don’t you think?”

Scully laughed and took the handbag back from Mulder to slip her coat check ticket inside. “Ready?”

Mulder gave the hand holding his arm a squeeze. “I got a beautiful woman on my arm. I’m in a monkey suit and I think the bar tickets are three for five dollars. We faced flesh-eating bugs, mothmen, EBE’s and Pusher. What’s not to be ready for?”

“Interpersonal office relationships?” she mused and he nodded in reluctant agreement.

They entered the line to enter the Astor Ballroom behind some agents Scully didn’t recognize and she took a deep breath. Upon entering the ballroom, agents were to find a table and then mingle until the dinner began. The itinerary for the evening was printed on the back of their invitation and she had memorized the time of each event so she could guage when would be an appropriate time to drag Mulder home and take his tuxedo off with her teeth.

“Agents Mulder and Scully,” Mulder gave their names as they approached walked up to the table.

The young woman sitting behind the table looked up to Mulder and tried to hide the blush creeping up on her cheeks when she glanced down to her sheet. “You’re at tables seven and eight.”

Mulder shook his head. “I really would rather not make a scene but that has to be a mistake.”

Scully raised her eyebrows at Mulder’s lack of desire to make a scene. The man had no cares for what was socially appropriate when it came to getting his way but he also liked flirting his way into situations like better seats on a plane or an upgrade on their government discounted hotel rooms during background check assignments.

The young woman checked the seating chart and the list. “Agent Mulder, you’re sitting at table seven off the dance floor with Executive Director Welsh and the head agents of the V.C.U. Agent Scully is seated next to A.D. Kersh and some agents from the ninth floor.”

Scully’s heart sank. “The ninth floor?”

Mulder knelt down at the table so he was eye to eye with the young woman. “Jennifer?”

She nodded quietly and looked at Mulder like he was a piece of cake after a month-long diet.

“I feel like it’s imperative for my partner here to have a nice evening,” he began. Jennifer tore her eyes from Mulder up to Scully and then back to the man in front of her. “I promised her a nice night out. She’s my plus one when it comes to these things so if there’s any way you could switch us to the same table, I’ll be forever in your debt.”

Jennifer glanced down to the seating chart and slowly picked up the pen on the table next to the chart.

“Jennifer…” Mulder said with a pleased tone.

She carefully wrote over a name on table seven and eight and then glanced up to Scully who was watching this event in rapt fascination. “It looks like I read the chart wrong. You both are at table eight.”

Mulder took her hand and kissed the back of it. “If the Federal Government was actually an effective law enforcement agency, I would give you a card for a get out of jail free ticket.”

Jennifer chuffed a laugh. “You’re the first person tonight to look at me in the eye and say my name. We’ll call it square.”

Mulder held his hands in mock prayer to Jennifer and stood up from the table. “Bless you.”

She handed Mulder and Scully their place holders for the table. “Enjoy your night.”

Mulder stood up and extended his arm to Scully. “We will.”

“Thank you,” Scully said to Jennifer before they entered the Astor ballroom.

They walked a few feet into the opulent setting before taking in the grandeur of the sight before them. The federal government obviously did not book this event on a budget. Large tables were set for politicians and socialites to dine next to federal employees so they could feel some self-importance over the holidays. Wait staff in white jackets and black ties held trays of champagne, wine and cocktails while other large trays of hors d’oeuvres made their way through the crowds that were heading toward the bar to get something stronger than the free wine offered.

While Scully might have grown up in a naval family, these kinds of events weren’t foreign to her as much as Mulder might think. Maggie Scully had a similar upbringing to Mulder and still hired staff for family events to lessen the work load for her. Dana Scully might not have taken dance lessons as part of her prep school credits but her Catholic school did teach the waltz in physical education as well as the hard and fast rules to volleyball.

“What are we having? Free wine or ticket drinks?” Mulder asked as they walked toward their table.

Scully looked at the line up for the bar and up to him. “I’ll just have the white they’re offering unless it’s bad.”

Mulder caught the attention of the waiter and took two glasses of white off the tray while she set her bag down next to her place card on table eight. Their company would be interesting that evening but even more so now that they were seated together.

“Who did Jennifer move for us to be canoodling with A.D. Kersh?” Mulder asked as he handed Scully her glass.

Scully picked up the place setting next to hers. “Unfortunately it was not Kersh.”

Mulder clinked her glass and took a sip. “Well, it’s not the worst I’ve ever had.”

Scully looked around at the trays of food. “Just wait.”

She slowly walked toward one of the waiters with a fruity tray and took two toothpicks of the strawberry caprese stacks on the tray. When she returned, she slid the strawberries off the small toothpicks, sucked the lemon basil drizzle off the fruit and plunked the berries inside her and Mulder’s wine.

“I don’t know if I’m grossed out or turned on,” he admitted. He took a sip and made a surprised face. “That’s actually really good.”

“Scully’s are resourceful,” she said and took a sip of her own wine.

Mulder gave her a delighted smile and they took note that since no one was sitting yet, they shouldn’t sit either. They managed to mingle together through the crowd without running into a single fellow agent that called them Mr. and Mrs. Spooky.

A surprise guest of the evening was Senator Matheson who insisted on calling Mulder ‘Fox’ throughout the conversation. Scully pressed her lips together and nodded while Senator Matheson gave his condolences again that they were taken off the X-Files. The aide holding onto Matheson’s arm finished three glasses of champagne while they spoke and then excused herself because she needed to ‘tinkle.’ Thankfully, Matheson was distracted by someone at the Mayor’s office that had no interest in speaking with two federal agents.

Scully ran into some people from the Medical Examiner’s office where they all told her how much she was missed and Mulder watched as though he wasn’t aware that she knew people outside of their relationship.

After their cocktails, an emcee announced for everyone to take their seats and dinner would be served shortly. When they approached their table, A.D. Kersh was already seated with his wife, the same woman they had spotted him with at Kmart at two in the morning.

“Agent Scully, Agent Mulder,” A.D. Kersh greeted tersely as he held his wife’s chair for her to sit down. “I didn’t realize we would be at the same table.”

“I’m Eleanor Kersh,” the middle-aged woman introduced herself with an extended hand to Scully.

“Dana Scully,” she returned and shook the woman’s hand. “This is my partner, Fox Mulder.”

“Oh, do you let anyone call you that?” Eleanor asked Mulder as he sat on the other side of Scully.

“I try not to,” he admitted and she laughed.

“Alvin hates when anyone calls him Alvie,” Eleanor said in a secretive tone and Scully’s eyes immediately looked over to her boss seated on the other side of his wife with an expression she couldn’t read. The man was prickly and unfriendly on his best days at work and this woman was sunshine and warm smiles. “So what do you go by, Agent Mulder?”

“Just Mulder,” he said.

When Eleanor’s face was turned back to her husband, Mulder mouthed with delight ‘Alvie’ and Scully stifled a laugh. If the wine wasn’t good, at least it was strong.

“So what do you do?” Scully asked.

“I raised seven children,” Eleanor answered and Scully’s jaw dropped. “I know.”

“That’s… a lot of kids,” Scully replied. “I’m one of four.”

“Was your father in the army?” Eleanor asked.

“Navy,” Kersh answered for Scully. “Decorated Captain, isn’t that right, Agent?”

“Oh, Alvin, call her by her damn name,” Eleanor admonished her husband and the look came back across his face. “So Dana, do people call you Dana?”

Scully nodded and pointed to Mulder. “Except him.”

“You FBI types,” Eleanor said with a shake of her head. “I don’t know why you have to all be so formal.”

“It’s a strange thing you think would be a Hollywood trope,” Scully mused.

Mulder’s hand reached under the table and gave the hand on her lap a squeeze.

“Not that I mind it now,” Scully added quickly.

A waiter came by to take their preference between beef, chicken or fish and the rest of the table took the opportunity to introduce themselves. The two ninth floor agents at their table worked in cyber crime. They were seated between the city politicians Scully recognized from the paper but couldn’t remember the names of.

A waiter came around with fresh strawberries for Scully’s wine and Mulder handed the young man a five dollar bill. For all the times Mulder had been a bad tipper, the man splurged when he wanted to. Scully saw the leather couch he treated like a bed in a furniture store during their first year working together and balked at the price tag. She might be the enigmatic Dr. Scully but he was an enigma wrapped in a riddle.

When the dinner, which was a light salmon in a lemon-tarragon sauce, was over, the big band began to play more dance music from the instrumental slow melodies over supper.

A.D. Kersh dabbed his face with his napkin and stood up to extend his hand to his wife. “My dear?”

Mulder nudged Scully as though they were witnessing a UFO landing and she looked down at her coffee as not to react.

When they left the table, Mulder looked at Scully expectantly. “So, do I get to spin you and that dress around the dance floor tonight?”

Scully looked around at the other agents that were present. Many she didn’t recognize through the sea of faces of executives and well-to-doers of Washington. The FBI agents that had shown up that night. There were over four hundred people in attendance that evening but Scully estimated maybe two hundred maximum were actually federal agents.

“I’ve been pretty well behaved tonight,” Mulder pointed out quietly as he leaned into her ear to speak. “I haven’t pushed you into a bathroom to have my way with you and that’s been a pretty difficult feat in itself.”

“Do you want to dance with me?” Scully asked with a bit of surprise. “I thought you only liked to partake on the dance floor for extra credit.”

“I asked you to dance at the Cher concert,” Mulder reminded her.

How could she forget? The slight bulge of his unspoken desire pushed against her stomach as they swayed back and forth and he held her tightly at the spot above her waist. It was the first time she ever thought he might kiss her, unprompted by danger or worry. He had kissed her cheek, hands, forehead in the past but she anticipated, slightly anxiously, that he might kiss her on the lips and want it to mean more than friendship.

“Unless…” he started.

Scully placed her hand on Mulder’s thigh. “No, I do.”

“Working out how to hide your mad love for me?” he teased and she looked at him almost sheepishly. “Really?”

“The last thing I want is to get some kind of reprimand for consorting and blowing our chance to get back-”

Mulder put a finger to her lips. “I don’t care.”

She studied his face for a moment. “Why not?”

“It’s Christmas,” he said as though that was explanation enough.

Scully looked out to the dance floor where Kersh and his wife, Skinner and a woman she didn’t recognize, politicians, and some fellow agents she did notice from around the hallways were dancing. It was a mix bag of agents dancing together, politicians and their age-inappropriate aides, husbands and wives as well as new couples swaying slowly on the dance floor.

Mulder stood up and extended his hand to her. “Dana Scully, may I have this dance?”

She took his hand to stand up. “It would be my pleasure.”

As they walked toward the dance floor, Scully looped the small ribbon around her wrist from the bottom of her dress to make dancing a little easier. He pulled her body tight to his and she felt the familiar slight bulge press into her stomach. Mulder looked down at her and smiled before he began to move them at a slow pace to the beat of the music.

His hand was at her lower back but not too low to suggest impropriety. His other hand held hers at his chest between them. This was comfortable between them and her mind forgot everyone else as Mulder swayed them back and forth.

“I want to kiss you right now,” he told her quietly and Scully’s face went from relaxed happiness to obvious panic. “Calm down, I won’t.”

She relaxed in his arms. “Oh.”

“But I want to,” he continued and she realized what he was doing. “I’d like to be pressing you into a hard surface while I taste the strawberries on your tongue.”

She cleared her throat and glanced around the dance floor quickly to see if anyone was paying attention to them. No one was. The romance provided by the low lighting in the ballroom with the string of lights adorning the ceiling created a space for everyone to be in their own world.

“You want to be doing all that?” she asked innocently but she pressed her body further into Mulder and he groaned in her ear. “That sounds nice, Mulder.”

“I would want it to be a little different from nice,” he whispered in her ear. “Whatever the descriptor word is for when you curse with every word in the book and cry out to God.”

“Do I do that?” she teased but they both knew that she did and it was because of him.

“It’s not bad for the ego,” he admitted and they both laughed.

The music lulled and Scully felt a tap on her shoulder.

When she turned to look, she was worried when it was Jerrod Brinkley standing expectantly.

“Dana,” he greeted. “I thought I spotted you.”

“Hello, Jerrod,” Scully said with a polite tone that most seemed to mistake for friendly but Mulder knew was forced. “How are you?”

“Great. I’m sitting with a congressman who knew my dad in San Diego. I should introduce you,” he offered. “He probably knew Ahab.”

Scully opened her mouth to say something but Mulder cleared his throat as his grip on her let go completely.

“Ahab,” Mulder repeated.

“That’s what Dana called the Captain, isn’t it?” Jerrod said with an amused tone.

It was completely out of place and probably something Maggie told Jerrod’s mother who repeated it to him. She had no idea where else he would have gotten that information.

“How’s the ninth floor treating you these days, Brinkley?” Mulder asked. “The blood drive go all right?”

“It would have been better if we had Dana there all day,” Jerrod said with a teasing tone. “I understand Kersh has you guys on a pretty short leash these days.”

“You might say that,” Mulder muttered.

“I didn’t really come over here to talk shop,” he admitted.

Scully could practically hear Mulder in his head quipping sarcastically ‘you don’t say!’

“Dana,” Jerrod began seriously. “Can I have this dance?”  
  
The look on his face was one of a man who probably never heard no from a woman. Before she could even decline his request, Mulder put his hand on Scully’s lower back and pushed her in Jerrod’s direction.

“By all means, Dana,” Mulder said. “I’m going to grab some fresh air.”

The music for the next song began and Jerrod took Scully in his arms. He was shorter than Mulder but a bit thicker build. His hand was slightly lower on her back than she preferred and she tried to keep a polite distance between them however that failed. She felt her body stiffen and she tried to glance over to where Mulder had disappeared to. This was not what she wanted from this evening.

  
Of all the things Mulder would do, bowing out when another man showed interest wasn’t exactly his M.O. He was territorial, he was possessive and needy. The man sulked if she wasn’t available and here he handed her off like a thing instead of a person with her own mind. She was starting to feel angered at the notion these men could decide things for her. This wasn’t the 1950s.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be there to drop off your tree,” he began as they swayed to the music. His hand pulled her flush against him and she cleared her throat. “I wanted to do it personally.”

Scully smiled tightly. “That’s okay. It arrived earlier than I expected.”

“I was hoping to get you alone tonight,” he admitted.

“Jerrod-” Scully began.

“I have to admit to a certain draw that I can’t really explain,” he continued, ignoring her obvious protests. “I’ve never really had a thing for redheads.”

The internal groan in her head at the lines he was dropping were fighting to come out. She wanted to say ‘look I’m sure you’re a great guy but I’ve got someone who drives me crazy in all the ways you want someone to,’ but he wasn’t really allowing her that opportunity.

“Maybe it’s because we have so much in common,” Jerrod pressed on as they made their way around the dance floor. “Charity, our childhoods, faith and family.”

“Those are definitely some similarities,” she reluctantly agreed.

Jerrod stopped their movements abruptly and swayed them back and forth. “Would you look at that?”

Scully looked up to where his eyes were drawn and her heart sank. “Mistletoe.”

Jerrod smiled at her and she decided if she was a single woman, he might even be someone she would consider dating three or four times before allowing him to kiss her at her door. While the night she spent with Ed Jerse ended in a passionate fuck between two people who barely knew one another, it was definitely an atypical action for Dana Scully. She preferred to take things slowly, learn about the person before she opened herself to possibly getting hurt. With Mulder, it wasn’t even a question of if she was attracted to him right away. Their work was so much bigger than chemistry. Their friendship grew in the trust they built with each other and eventually, the switch was flicked inside of her and she couldn’t imagine herself with anyone else.

Jerrod Brinkley, for all of his nice qualities, didn’t spark anything inside Dana Scully. After all she had seen and done, it would take someone or something spectacular, wonderful or otherwise, to draw her away from Mulder. He was it for her.

And yet Jerrod was pulling her closer and pressing his mouth against hers. The kiss had no feeling from her end as she allowed him to push his too soft lips against hers.

The mere action of him moving in without permission had caused her lips to part only slightly and she pulled away quickly. A hand covered her mouth and she stepped back from Jerrod at the intrusion. When she looked past his smug face she saw Mulder, standing directly behind her with panic on his face.

“Oh god,” she whispered. “Excuse me, Jerrod.”

Mulder turned on his heel and disappeared into the crowd before Scully could stop him and Jerrod caught up to her on the edge of the dance floor. His hand went to her elbow too possessively for a man who hadn’t brought her here.

“Dana, what happened?”

“Jerrod, you’re a really nice guy-”

“No I’m not,” he interrupted and she realized he was probably right. “But go on.”

“I’m… I’m not in a place where I’m ready to date-”

Jerrod looked confused. “What?”

She pulled her arm from his grasp. “Excuse me please.”

It took too long to exit the ballroom and into the foyer where agents were mingling as purposeful outsiders to a mandatory work event. If Scully hadn’t been dancing just now with Mulder or Jerrod, she would have been one of them slouching on a couch in her beautiful gown with another glass of wine and discussing the ridiculousness of the evening with Mulder. Maybe he would have been describing what he wanted to do to her. That was fun.

She saw Mulder standing outside the washroom and as the crowd parted to show him more clearly, she saw her. Diana. She was holding Mulder’s hand and talking to him intently. How did her mere proximity to Mulder drive Scully wild with jealousy?

Just as she reached a distance she could hear them, the low dialogue of their first names and something about gifts was said. Scully didn’t want to hear anymore.

She didn’t need to stay and mingle any longer. She could go home by now and escape for the weekend. She was good at that.

Mulder looked up from his obedient nodding at Diana and spotted Scully in line for the coat check. As she was pulling her stole around her arms, he caught up to her.

“Where are you going?”

“Home,” she said as she began to walk towards the lobby.

“Why?” he challenged as he followed her. “Did you see me kissing someone else?”

“ _He_ kissed _me_ ,” she corrected him.

“That makes it better,” he replied sarcastically. “You didn’t tell him like I asked you to, did you?”

“When did I have the chance?” she asked. “He’s been talking _at_ me for the last twenty minutes. I mean, I’m used to that with you-”

“Oh fuck,” he groaned.

“I didn’t want him to kiss me,” she said stopping in the lobby to face him. She pointed one finger at him. “I wanted you. I want you. I’ve always wanted you and I don’t have an ex lurking in the background every time you say something I don’t like.”

“Well that’s fucking unfair,” he snapped.

“Have a nice night, Mulder,” Scully replied. “I’ll see you Monday.”

She could hear him calling after her as she exited the night air but she didn’t stop. She got into a cab and asked to be taken on a drive while she tried to fight back tears that had no business creeping into her evening.


	13. Reflection

**Friday, December 18th**  
**National Mall,**  
**Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool**  
**Washington D.C.**

 

The trees along the reflecting pool acted like a shelter from the cold January air but regardless, the temperature wasn’t ideal to be sitting or lingering outside. Under the circumstances, Mulder wouldn’t be the one to complain.

They had managed to survive four hours of mingling with politicians, high level executives and fellow members of the FBI without an incident. No one called him “Spooky” Mulder, they entertained quiet conversation with the other attendees and danced to an instrumental take on ‘A Kiss to Build a Dream On.’

The song had been playing in his head since Scully walked out on him from the crowded lobby of the St. Regis Hotel. Of course, when Scully danced with Jerrod ‘Beach Boy’ Brinkley, ‘Moonlight Serenade’ was playing over the dance floor.

It was after Scully left that Mulder returned to their table to gather the picture ticket the photo-op girl took of them at the table. If she decided to leave him, he wanted a commemorative picture of the night he almost had it all.

There was so much fucking romance in the air that night he almost couldn’t blame Brinkley for moving in on Scully. She was her own woman. She was capable, one of the smartest people he knew and truly a kind person. That in itself made her alluring but she was also a knock out - not that she believed him when he told her that. Fine, he could tell her she was beautiful every day if it made a difference but she didn’t put her worth only on her appearance.

It was inside the ballroom that Mulder was confronted by California idiot who couldn’t take the subtlety of a Scully-hint to back off. She hadn’t encouraged him and ignored his calls evenings and weekends. The warmest she had been toward him that Mulder had witnessed was on the elevator rides they had been forced to share. Mulder didn’t see how they interacted the Monday afternoon that Kersh allowed Scully to help with the blood drive but she told him it was fine so he believed her. It bothered him more than a little that Scully didn’t express to him flat out that she wasn’t interested in him and therefore, this misunderstanding tonight happened.

“What the hell is going on with that partner of yours?” Brinkley asked as he spun Mulder around to face him at their table. “What did you say to her?”

“You kissed her,” Mulder reminded Brinkley. “Maybe she left because she was upset.”

Brinkley scoffed.

“You know, Jerrod, not every woman wants to be kissed on the dance floor in front of her coworkers, bosses and who knows who else,” Mulder said condescendingly. “I’ll be surprised if you don’t have some reprimand in your file for unwanted advances toward a fellow agent.”

“Bullshit,” Brinkley scoffed. “I’ve seen how handsy you are with her.”

Mulder’s eyebrows shot up and he shook his head. “You don’t understand the first thing about Dana if you think she’s comfortable letting anyone inside her bubble.”

Mulder found his photo ticket and tucked it inside his pocket. He brushed past Brinkley and out into the foyer outside the ballroom where a number of guests were mingling.

“Mulder!” Brinkley called after him.

Mulder continued toward the coat check.

“Come on, Spooky,” Brinkley called again.

Mulder spun on his heel and the crowd around them fell silent to watch the display. “You’re drunk. Back off.”

“Oh am I?” Brinkley said in a mocking tone. “At least I had the balls-”

A firm hand was placed on Brinkley’s shoulder, cutting off his sentence and changing the smug look on his face to one of fear.

“Agent,” Kersh interrupted.

Mulder gave a glance toward Kersh and the people around that were now pretending not to watch the interaction. The last he saw Brinkley was being escorted to a cab by Kersh and another fellow agent who was equal in size to Kersh. Not the size of men you want to tussle with, especially when it’s two against one. Brinkley seemed to understand that as much.

Mulder reached into his jacket pocket to retrieve his phone. Scully’s phone rang a few times before a muffled voice said something about Lincoln Memorial and the phone went dead. Nothing in Scully’s neighbourhood of Georgetown was related to Lincoln and he knew immediately where she had run off too.

He turned to the coat check clerk and handed over his ticket. “You guys have any blankets or anything I can borrow?”

He was thinking about the missed opportunity to sucker punch Brinkley as he walked toward the noticeable redhead sitting on a park bench on the reflecting pool in the middle of January. Chances were she wasn’t armed and Mulder’s instinct to keep her protected suddenly went on alert.

“Is this seat taken?” he asked as he approached the bench.

Scully looked up to Mulder with a forced smile on her face. Her eyes were puffy but her makeup was still flawless. He could see she was upset but he waited to ask her about it.

“I should warn you that I’m armed and dangerous,” she said as her face fell.

“I’ll take my chances,” he said with a smile and shook out the blanket he pilfered from the coat check girl.

She willingly gave it to him but since she probably wouldn’t get it back until next week, he almost felt bad. He wrapped the blanket around Scully’s shoulder’s and she adjusted herself on the bench so it was under her backside also.

“Thank you,” she said with a slight grin.

“Where would someone hide a gun in that outfit?” he asked teasingly as he leered towards her.

The cleavage on that dress was something else but the stole and the blanket around her prevented him from seeing as much as he had during their dinner and dancing.

Scully looked down at her hands. “There’s a few places.”

Mulder put his arm across the back of the bench and she scooted closer to him.

“Are we in a fight?” Mulder asked dumbly.

She looked up at him again and he could see the water in her eyes. There was a redness around the edges of her cornea but there wasn’t an errant streak of mascara on her face. Of course, she wouldn’t be an ugly crier. There was something elegant about the way she did everything and sometimes it was slightly more than annoying.

“Were you crying?”

Scully put her hand on Mulder’s and he pulled her cold fingers up to his lips to warm them up.

“I felt angry and sometimes my emotions of being frustrated or angry manifest themselves into tears when I can’t yell or-”

“Angry?” he interrupted.

Other agents displaying childish behaviour at the bureau would lash out at someone like Dana Scully for identifying her emotions and logically breaking them down. They called her a robot or a frigid bitch because they failed to see the burning passion inside her. As Mulder looked down at her on the bench with the reflecting pool in the distance and the memories of them tangled in bed together, he knew that she wasn’t any of those things.

“I was angry at myself and at Brinkley,” she told him.

It relaxed him a little to hear her call the San Diego nightmare by his last name.

“Not at me?” he clarified.

She shook her head slowly. “I would react the same way… I might not have run to my ex-”

“I didn’t run to Diana,” he cut her off.

Scully rolled her eyes as if to say ‘yeah right.’

“I didn’t. I was in the line for the bathroom and she asked me if I was going to my mother’s to exchange gifts on Christmas.”

“Why would she ask you that?” Scully countered and the insecurity in her voice killed him.

He really wished that she would understand how much Diana wasn’t a threat to what they had. Maybe it reflected how little he had done to reassure her but it probably spoke more to the fact that he hadn’t shared information that the relationship with Diana existed and Scully had to find out on her own. That was the worst way to tell someone anything.

“I…” Mulder hesitated to talk to Scully about Diana. He wanted to assuage her frustrations and jealousy but this might not help. “She knows my relationship with my mother can be strained and the holidays are hard for her.”

“For your mother?” Scully clarified and Mulder nodded. “It’s hard for me to see past what I distrust in her.”

“I don’t expect you to be best friends,” he assured her. “Actually, that might be worse.”

Mulder wanted to bring up why she hadn’t flat-out told Jerrod no or rejected him. He wanted to tell Scully she owed him an apology but he was the one who agreed to step aside for the dance. This was the kind of messiness he avoided when he used porn and strippers to satisfy his physical urges because the emotional warfare was difficult for Mulder to handle.

“I wish I had just told Brinkley a flat-out no he would have understood,” Scully confessed. “If I had been able to tell him I had you, he would have probably respected that over a simple ‘I’m not interested,’ which is typical for more than just him.”

“What do you mean?” Mulder asked in hopes she wasn’t lumping all men into a shitty category. Although after tonight, he wasn’t sure he didn’t deserve it.

“If I turn a guy down because I’m involved with someone else, it’s something another man can respect or not,” she explained. “Just having my own opinion that I don’t want to see him isn’t fathomable.”

“That’s a little more than bullshit,” Mulder replied.

“That’s the guys club of the FBI, Mulder,” she reminded him. “It’s everywhere but among agents that should respect me, they have a harder time seeing beyond my gender. Men often dismiss women’s desires for their own pursuits.”

Mulder nodded. Brinkley didn’t take too kindly to being told his affections were off base.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to defend your honour,” he whispered and kissed the side of your head.

“I can defend my own honour but I appreciate the sentiment,” she replied.

“I feel like I should,” he said. “Since I’m yours and you’re mine.”

“Pardon?”

“I just mean…” he shook his head. “You’re the only person I want to be with. I can’t see an end to us. I can’t see myself wanting to work without you. I just want you, in every aspect, forever.”

“Mulder,” she said with an inflection that made him think she might cry. “You’re a fucking romantic.”

Mulder had considered himself Scully’s longer than he and Diana were ever an item. Diana and Mulder lasted almost two years on and off with a lot of uneasy instances in between. It was 1987 when they got together and she had left him for greener pastures before the calendar read April 1989. She met the Lone Gunmen but never developed a rapport the way Scully had with Langly, Byers and Frohike.

He was comparing Diana and Scully as he pulled the scarf around his neck tighter and sniffed. What he realized then was that they weren’t apples to oranges. They were apples to automobiles. Maybe he shouldn’t compare them to things but in his mind, the relationships were entirely different.

If Scully compared she and Mulder to she and Jack or her boyfriend from medical school… even the guy who she was seeing when she was assigned to the X-Files. They were all different, right?

“Hey Scully,” he started and she hummed in reply. “I’m not like Jack or those other guys you saw, was I?

“What other guys?” she asked.

“Your other boyfriends… or lovers…. Other guys who you were with. Who was the guy from medical school?” he asked. “You mentioned him once before but not a lot of specifics.”

“Daniel,” she answered quietly. “He was my instructor.”

“And Jack,” Mulder continued.

“What are you getting at?” she asked warily.

“I’m not… I’m trying to - ugh.” He let out a long breath as he tried to best word this question. “I’m not like them… am I?”

Mulder wasn’t sure he wanted to know but the curiosity inside him was too much. He didn’t want them to have the same fate. The only thing Mulder knew about his future was that he wanted Scully in it. If he was like her past lovers, he could lose her too.

“The things you have in common with them are very little,” she began as her finger started drawing a small pattern on his leg through his pants. “You’re all driven, married to your work, passionate and intense.”

Mulder nodded. “Oh.”

“Daniel was complicated,” Scully began slowly. “I was attracted to him because he was so challenging and I wanted his approval. I had some very terrible boyfriends before him that kind of destroyed my self-worth. I had sworn off dating and there was Daniel, asking my opinion about important things when it came to human lives. He had really helped me grow as a doctor. I really felt safe with him, like things were on an even level.”

Mulder felt his heart sink at the similarities to their situation.

“The fifteen year age difference didn’t bother me because I hadn’t considered romance as a possibility,” she continued. “I had a crush, of course. I admired him but he was _married_. In my mind, that meant he was off-limits.”

“How did it… I mean how did that change for you?” he asked.

“Long hours, some confessions of his unhappiness of his marriage and I felt… sorry for him,” she said and shook her head. “I see the trap of that now and if I could go back and tell myself that I would…”

“What do you mean?”

“I just thought he was misunderstood at home. He was doing all this amazing work and my involvement in his paper began as a way to help him show his wife how much he was doing for the medical community and therefore, for people,” she explained. “But I fell for him and somehow we became two people having an affair that was embarrassing to try to untangle myself from.”

She looked down at her hands and tucked them back under the blanket around her shoulders.

“The grey area of your moral code is very small,” he noted and she nodded.

“Jack was emotionally restrictive,” Scully continued. “Whatever was going on at work was directly related to how he behaved at home. He was intense and fun when he wanted to be but he could just cut me off-”

“What the hell are you _doing_ with me?” he interrupted.

“What?”

“Scully… these guys… I mean I’m not married but… I’m these guys in all the worst ways,” he told her. “What the _hell_ are you doing with me?”

She shook her head. “You’re not those things anymore, Mulder. You’ve grown up.”

He looked at her warily. “I don’t…”

“When we first started to work together, you had a lot of those qualities with a lot more charm,” she said and they both laughed. “I have to say, Mulder, you’ve grown up or stopped a lot of the behaviour that used to make me feel untrusted by you.”

Mulder thought about the last time he shut her out or used her assignment as a ‘spy’ against her in an argument. “ _I’m_ a grown up?”

“Well you can’t shop for yourself and your housekeeping needs work but you’re a good man, Mulder,” she said and he pulled her to him tighter. “Why did you ask?”

“I guess when I was thinking about Diana earlier-” he stopped himself. “You haven’t believed in the same things I did but I never doubted that you believed in me.”

Mulder could feel her raising an eyebrow in skepticism and when he asked her if she was, she nodded and laughed.

“Okay well, I felt it more often than not that you were on my side, Scully,” he insisted.

“That sounds more like it,” she admitted. They were quiet for a moment and she cleared her throat again. “I’m sorry about Jerrod.”

“It’s-”

“Don’t say it’s okay,” she cut him off. “It _wasn’t_.”

It wasn’t but the more she beat herself up about it, the less he wanted to.

“It wasn’t,” he agreed.

“And I don’t want anyone else either,” she told him. “I’m… I’m sorry I didn’t tell Brinkley something else. That kind of attention from men is foreign to me.”

Mulder had heard Scully say she was sorry about a lot of things over the years but her apologizing for this felt different.

“I’ve been paying that kind of attention to you for years,” he teased.

“It took you five years to try to kiss me,” she pointed out and he nodded. “I’m embarrassed to say that it’s been a long time since a man pursued me like that.”

He had a hard time believing that. Scully, while in tune to what was happening with others around her, was daft when it came to reading the signals from men and quickly forgot after being hit on by other men, brushing it off as nothing. It drove Mulder crazy.

“Scully, I have to confess,” he admitted. “This wasn’t how I expected this night to go.”

“Me too,” she replied as she looked up at him with such honesty and sorrow in her eyes that it broke his heart. “I know we can’t be public at work… but something made me forget that for a moment.”

Mulder kissed her at her hairline and pressed his forehead against hers. “Don’t come to your senses and call this off between us, okay?”

Scully chuffed. “It would take a bit more than tonight to push me away completely, Mulder.”

“I don’t want to be a mistake you regret down the road,” he told her honestly.

She pulled back and he saw the heartache on her face he saw the night he almost kissed her in his hallway. “I don’t regret anything with us.”

He couldn’t take being left by her, that much was certain but he didn’t know if she knew that. He wasn’t sure he wanted her to be aware of how much he needed her in his life. Going back to ‘just’ working together after what he had experienced with her privately would be torture. Not having her alongside him at work would be just as torturous.

The only option was to compromise, be a better man and make it work. He would do better than his father. Fox Mulder would do better than the man who bed his mother on too many occasions and conspired with a consortium to ruin the human race. He would be a better man to a woman who he didn’t deserve. Scully had done everything to earn a place of trust and love in his heart - the least he could do would be to try a fraction as hard.

“Scully?” he started.

She licked her lower lip. “Mulder, I don’t want to think of us as anything else other than what we’ve come to now. You’re my forever too.”

He felt blown away.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he muttered.

“Kiss me, you idiot,” she ordered wistfully.

“In front of all these people?” he joked about their solitude of the late hour.

Snow began to fall around them from the night sky. The clouds that held the warm air inside D.C. had filled with precipitation and released large flakes that were sticking to the ground to cover the concrete path in a blanket of white.

He obliged and pressed his mouth to hers. Her lower lip hit just below his and she was using her teeth to nip at his mouth after her tongue flicked against his. She teased as she did the most chaste of kisses and he could feel the passion building inside of him.

Mulder pulled back to brush the snowflakes from her shoulders and looked down at his own jacket starting to collect snow. “Are we going to be okay, Scully?”

Scully nodded. “I think so, Mulder.”

He couldn’t take her reserved demeanour as a bad sign right now. Scully needed to internalize and contemplate, to process and break down how she felt. At the very least, he should take her home and give her the space to do so.

“Come on,” he prompted and stood up.

She nodded and he helped her off the bench to walk towards the cab that had been idling for them on Henry Bacon Circle.

“You paid a guy to wait here?” she clarified.

Mulder shrugged as he opened the door for her. “I didn’t know if you were going to tell me to fuck off or-”

“I wouldn’t have talked about my exes for twenty dollars long-” she protested.

“Scully, you were fine. Now get your ass in the car,” he interrupted. “It’s freezing out here.”

She laughed. “Okay.”

 

** *** ***

 

The cab pulled up in front of Scully’s Georgetown apartment and Mulder told the driver to wait a minute. As he exited the car, he held the door and his hand out for Scully, who exited with the blanket still wrapped around her shoulders.

“What are you doing?” she asked as she gathered her dress from around her feet to exit the cab.

She stood on the concrete and studied his face. Mulder told the driver to wait again before closing the passenger door to give them an amount of privacy.

“Oh what a dummy,” the cabbie muttered as the door closed.

Mulder was pretty sure the driver turned down the radio so he could hear their conversation but it didn’t really matter in the end.

“I’ll call you Sunday,” he said as he tried to fight the anxiety in his voice.

“We were going to decorate my tree tomorrow,” Scully reminded him. “Finally.”

It had been put off after the tree delivery for some couch acrobatics Mulder was particularly proud of and then ignored that week while she hunted for a gown for this evening.

“I didn’t hear anyone complaining last weekend after she came three times in one go,” Mulder muttered and she nudged him with her shoulder as she laughed. They looked at each other for a beat and he shrugged. “I thought you wanted some space.”

She looked around the cement that was slowly building it’s own coverage of snow as though the answers to her feelings were written somewhere in the concrete that was still exposed. “I don’t want to be alone.”

He used a crooked index finger to pull her chin so she would have to look him in the eye. “What do you want, Dana?”

“You,” she said simply and he believed her. “If you’ll have me.”

“I’ll take the hell out of you,” he retorted and felt the corniness in the line but she smiled anyway.

Apparently, Scully didn’t mind too much corniness from him. She pulled on the lapels of his jacket with the scarf overlapping on her fingers and he took the hint to lean down to kiss her again. She took his bottom lip between her teeth as she pushed her mouth into his and pulled on the flesh a little to make his lip ache as she released it. That was a definitely a “fuck me Mulder” signal he had learned from Scully in the last week.

Mulder opened the passenger side door on the front of the cab and handed the cabbie fifty dollars. “Thanks.”

“Not as dumb as he looks,” the cabbie muttered as he counted his bills. “Merry Christmas.”

Mulder patted on the roof of the cab and took Scully’s hand in his to take her inside. He tried to be careful around the bottom of the dress and then thought of a time in their lives she could possibly wear such a thing again.

_Why didn’t they get assigned the undercover work that had them spying on governors and executives in this kind of apparel all the time?_

As he watched Scully walk down her hall with a sway of her hips and he nearly tripped on an edge to the carpet, he realized it was probably for the best.

Scully unlocked her front door as Mulder was catching up to her. “You all right?”

He pulled the fleece blanket from her shoulders and took in the sight of Scully in the wrap and deep blue gown. “I’m better than fine.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Come on, cowboy.”

 

** ** **

 

The inside of Scully’s apartment was warm with a slight trail of uncharacteristic mess from the bedroom to the living room for the typically fastidious woman. A sweater, a pair of shoes and a wrap were laid out on the coffee table while a pack of thigh high stockings sat on the kitchen table with Scully’s usual handbag. The jacket she wore to work was draped over the back of her chair and an empty bag of rice crackers sat near the kitchen sink.

“If this was anyone else’s home, I might assume this was usual, but I want to ask if you were robbed,” Mulder joked as he looked around.

Scully took the wrap off around her shoulders and gathered a few of the items from around her apartment. “I was rushed after work.”

He picked up the package of thigh highs off the kitchen table and looked into the opened box. “Is there a pair missing from in here?”

Scully nodded. “If you help me clean up my mess, you can help me unzip this dress too.”

“I’m being good,” he reminded her quickly as he dutifully hung his scarf and jacket by the front door.

She laughed and nodded her head towards her bedroom. She hung the previously discarded sweater, returned two pairs of heels to the closet and walked slowly towards Mulder to take the stockings from his hands. She turned her back to him.

“Do you mind?”

The zipper was low on her back and he had to undo the eyelet and hook above it before tugging on the delicate pull tab down the chain. The ivory teeth came apart slowly and exposed more of her soft skin. She looked over her shoulder to watch him as he moved the slider down to the last inch.

She put her hands up to the shoulder straps and turned to face him in the dress. “Can you help?”

Mulder nodded and kneeled in front of her as he pulled the dress carefully down her body. What was exposed was her naked flesh, covered only by white lace panties and nude silk thigh high hosiery. She put her hand on his shoulder as she stepped carefully out of the gown. As Mulder stood up with the dress in his hands, he was disappointed to see Scully pull her robe on over her body.

She hung the dress back on the wooden hanger and zipped the gown into a dress bag with the Nordstrom logo on the bottom.

“Feel better?” he asked and she nodded.

She preferred things in their compartments and in their proper place versus the disarray of matter their office and his apartment could get to. He complied with organizing it more to her standards every year. This year, he watched her face crumple in disapproval at the standard to which he kept his desk.

For a man like Mulder who was meticulous about his grooming, hygiene and clothing, his surroundings were a crap shoot and she knew that.

“I wish you hadn’t put that thing on,” he admitted and she rolled her eyes. “I’m just being honest. My resolution for 1999 was to be more honest.”

“It’s still 1998,” she reminded him as she pulled on his bowtie. “And when are you dishonest?”

“Every time I’ve not kissed you when I wanted to,” he said and her cheek pinkened. “Why does that makes you blush?”

“I’m still getting used to hearing you talk about wanting me,” she confessed as she undid the buttons on his shirt. “As easy as it’s has been to slip into this part of us… It _excites_ me to know that you want me.”

Mulder could feel himself grinning. He watched her fingers slip each button through the small hole on his shirt before she took the cufflinks out of each arm. His shirt was laid on the end of the bed and he felt the desire in his trousers twitch with yearning.

Her tongue darted from behind her teeth and she moistened her top lip. “I want you too, Mulder.”

His desire went from a mild craving to a suffused ache that tented the material of his suit. He pressed his mouth to hers and took her body into his hands. It was as she moaned into his mouth when his palm brushed over a turgid nipple that he felt his resolve break. What started as slow and tender became heated and frantic.

The foreplay was left to another time as their mouths played against each other and their hands grabbed at visible flesh. The tie on her robe was the first to go.

They found themselves in a tangled heap on her bed with his pants around his ankles, her underwear pushed to the side and his socks still on as the moment of penetration was about to take place. Her robe was still hanging onto one arm as he brushed the head of his cock against her swollen lips and she dipped herself against him to urge him inside.

“ _Now_ , Mulder,” she pleaded.

He pushed inside slowly with his boxer briefs still around his hips and her stocking clad legs wrapped around his waist. She was so tight but her desire was perceptible as the slickness from her walls coated him.

Their mouths met again as his hips pumped. Her hands clung onto the muscles on his back and the bed rocked as they worked out the rest of their frustrations from miscommunications of the evening.

Scully broke the kiss to put one finger in his mouth and take his saliva to flick across the bundle of nerves at her centre.

“I love you,” he grunted as she tightened around him

He pushed into her harder and faster as her body swelled so tightly around him. He was driving into her with the hope he could push away the doubts they had in each other. Each thrust made her shudder and tense.

“Yes!” she cried out as she arched her body up underneath him and her nails dug into the skin of his back. “Like that! _Fuck_!”

Mulder drove faster and he felt his cock throb as his own orgasm took over. It shot out like a bullet and his hips moved erratically as he emptied himself inside her. They panted in uncoordinated unison as she quivered in the aftershocks of her own release underneath him. The sight of her undone was enough to remind him how lucky he was and his heart filled with the sudden desire to do better by her. She had let down her walls completely now. His next resolution would be to honour that trust she put in him.


	14. Trees, Nativities and Snow

**Saturday, December 19th**  
**Georgetown,**  
**Dana Scully's Apartment,**  
**3:45 p.m.**

 

Burl Ives sang over the stereo in the living room, the fire roared and the entire apartment smelled like fresh pine. While a roasted chicken cooked in the oven and potatoes waited to boil, the task of hanging ornaments was the priority. She would not be deterred by Mulder’s skilled fingers or his tongue. She told him if he wanted to stick around, he needed to put his height to good use and help her.

Mulder grumbled but obliged as he strung the lights on the branches. Next, the bobbles, angels and popsicle stick ornaments were hung where she instructed. The tree had acclimated in the apartment all week and after she vacuumed and mopped three times, there were small pine needles scattered around her living room she couldn’t seem to completely rid the space of.

“Do you sleep with that thing?” he teased as he nodded towards the dust buster in her hands.

“You know I don’t,” she retorted as she looked at him over her shoulder.

He grinned at her and scratched the stubble on his cheeks. “You know, with a French maid uniform on, that position you’re in would be pretty hot.”

She was currently on all fours with the dust buster in one hand while she tried to clean up the last of the fallen needles. She looked over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow.

“ _L’homme n’est point fait pour méditer, mais pour agir_ ,” Scully spoke back to him the Jean-Jacque Rousseau quote.

“I don’t have a clue what you said,” Mulder put his hand slowly across his groin. “But my Christmas tree just lit up.”

She laughed and got herself out from under the tree to straighten the flannel skirt around the base. “I’m not one for handcuffs or role play but I might be convinced to buy a new lacy thing if I were so motivated.”

He dropped to his knees with a green bobble hanging from his fingers. “How do I motivate you?”

She smiled as she put her hands on her hips. “This is a pretty good start.”

He set the bobble on the coffee table and shuffled on his knees across the carpet towards her. He took her hips in his hands with a determined look on his face. She took his head in her hands and smiled back at him.

“I’m still not having sex with you until this tree is decorated,” she said with a shake of her head. Mulder pushed his face into her abdomen and breathed in. His stubble scratched across the small expanse of skin between her shirt and jeans and he kissed her flat belly. Just a slight touch and she felt the familiar fire of desire begin to burn inside her. “That feels good but still no.”

His tongue traced a quick line along where he had just touched and his lips began darting along in open mouthed kisses. “Still?”

She clutched at his newly shorn hair and pulled his face away from her stomach. “No.”

“I don’t know why I thought sex would be easier to convince you of versus an alien,” he said as he slowly stood up and adjusted himself. “You’ve seen an alien and had sex with me and yet-”

“Hey,” she cut him off. “I didn’t see the alien.”

“The one in the tube by the spaceship?” he clarified with his voice going up an octave out of shock.

She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t see a spaceship.”

“Scully,” he chuffed and rolled his eyes. “I don’t even… I can’t… what the hell are you even talking about? Of course it was a spaceship. What else would it be that you were taken to and that left a giant crater?”

“It was… a… _UFO_ …” she said reluctantly.

He held up a finger. “Don’t… don’t start that.”

“ _Unidentified_ flying object,” she repeated. “Unidentified.”

“I identified it. I identified _the shit_ out of it,” he retorted as he put his hands on his hips.

She made a reluctant face. “You were concussed.”

“And I still rescued your gooey, would-be alien incubator ass,” he said smugly. “So, you’re welcome.”

“Thank you,” she replied quietly and she smiled at him. “ _Now_ I might have sex with you.”

Mulder looked dumbfounded. “What?”

The verbal sparring did a lot for her libido but she remembered the tree. That tree had been ignored long enough. She wanted to finish decorating it so she could move on to baking cookies and take Mulder for a walk to one of her favourite cathedral churches while it snowed. She glanced over to the tree that was about one-third decorated. “Actually, maybe in twenty minutes.”

“You’re a difficult woman,” he said as he sat down heavily on the couch.

“Once we’re done, we can eat dinner then go on that walk,” she said. Mulder nodded less than enthusiastically and stood up slowly. It occurred to her that this might be less than ideal for him if he had negative connotations around tree decorating. “Unless this isn’t your cup of tea. You don’t have to stay but I really want to get this done today.”

“No,” Mulder said quickly. Her eyebrows shot up at his quick protest and he shook his head. “I want to be here. I don’t have a lot of memories of doing this and enjoying myself.”

“You never got a tree for your apartment?” she questioned.

Scully moved around the tree as she began to carefully hang the glass bobbles where she could. She liked to spread out the colours so there was a bit of green, white and red in every area. She added bits of blue ones throughout but not too many and a few gold ones. In the end, it was all supposed to sparkle and shine like the trees she had as a child from her earliest memories in Japan to living in California with not a snowflake in sight. The fun, handmade and funky ornaments went on last. Mulder was supposed to be putting the bobbles near the top when he got sidetracked, not that she minded too terribly.

“I got one of those fake ones that had the lights on it already and was painted white for the office, remember?” he told her. “You said it was hideous.”

“It was _hideous_ ,” she said solemnly. “But you don’t live at work, Mulder.”

He shrugged as he fiddled with one of the angel ornaments Melissa bought her. “When we first started working together, I left the office to eat, sleep and run. During your cancer-”

Mulder stopped himself and shook his head.

“What?” she asked. Scully set the box of bobbles down on the coffee table and stood between his knees.

He looked up at her. “I thought about getting a tree… I was worried it would be a jinx to finding your cure. Like I was hoping for the future when there wasn’t one.”

“ _Mulder_ ,” she admonished. “You aren’t the reason I had cancer or was abducted.”

He sighed. “I’m not?”

“ _No_ ,” she assured him. “I don’t blame you in the slightest. I thought we had settled this.”

Mulder pulled her onto his lap and kissed her shoulder. “I’m still aware of all you’ve lost… Your sister, your daughter-”

“I honour their memories at church and pray for them,” Scully replied. “I can’t blame you for my sister or Emily any more than I can blame myself.”

He looked up at her with an uncertainty in his eyes she could only classify as ‘worried puppy’ and she kissed his forehead.

“When do you think you’ll be able to forgive yourself?” she asked.

Mulder looked at the tree as though the answers laid on one of the white pine branches. “In 2023? Right after you’re made the head of the bureau.”

She laughed at that. That conversation of their timeline was from years ago and she was surprised he remembered the offhand comment.

“Okay well I’ll hold you to that,” she said as she got off his lap. She tilted her head to the side as she decided if the tree looked ‘right.’ It didn’t. “I think I need popcorn garland.”

“Maybe we should finish with the ornaments before you add food on there,” he said. “Hey, do you have any more of those candy canes lying around?”

“In the kitchen,” she said. “With the other junk food I keep here because of you.”

“Keep telling yourself that, Scully,” he returned as he padded across the space to the kitchen.

She watched him open her top cupboard where treats were just out of reach for her so she couldn’t indulge without working for it. Usually, it meant getting a chair and if she truly had that big of a hankering, she could embarrass herself and climb on a stool to get it. It didn’t always work.

Mulder came back with a tin of brownies she had brought back from her mother’s. The very ones she baked that he made orgasmic noises to and led to her kissing him in a downstairs bathroom more than once.

“Hazelnut brownie?” he offered as he held the tin out to her. “The lady who bakes these is stubborn as all hell but has an ass that won’t quit.”

“Why would that matter to me?” she asked as she broke a piece from between the wax paper and took a small bite.

“So good, right?” he said knowingly and she nodded in agreement. Mulder took her wrist and took a bite from the piece between her fingers as his tongue licked the remains off her thumb. He popped a peppermint candy cane in the corner of his mouth and smiled at her. “Right?”

Her resolve for completing the tree was faltering but his cocky smile was not about to get her pants off now. Not after six years of wondering what that mouth could do to her and pushing down her desires for their search for the truth. She could postpone for another ten minutes to finish her tree.

She broke off another chunk of the brownie from the tin and took a bite. After she swallowed, she pulled the candy cane from his mouth and nibbled on the end. “So good.”

“You’re not playing fair,” he grumbled as he took the candy cane back from her.

She might not have been playing ‘fair’ with the flirtations but her priority for finishing her tree wouldn’t be deterred. Mulder might be a tasty morsel of a man with very specific talents in the bedroom but this was Christmas and there had to be some sort of order to things. She picked up a few more of the ornaments to put the finishing touches on the tree.

“You know Scully,” he started. “I was thinking about Christmas and what your plans were…”

She turned to look at him as she held a walnut shell reindeer ornament in hand. The red nose needed to be reglued on last year while the felt antlers had held up well over the years.

“My plans?” she repeated.

“I called my mother this morning and asked her what she was doing,” he began as he twirled the sugary confection in his fingers. “She’s going to be with the one sister she still talks to for the holidays…”

“My entire family is flying in to spend the week at my mother’s,” she replied with a tone that reminded him she had told him this before. “We talked about this.”

“I know,” he assured her that he did remember. “I just thought… you invited me to come…”

“And you said not a chance in hell,” she reminded him.

He held up his hands. “I think I might have been hasty in that rejection of such a kind invitation.”

“It was also an invitation from my mother,” she replied as she put the walnut reindeer on the tree. The frayed gold string might need to be replaced next year but so far it was still going strong. “I softened the rejection for her versus the one you gave me.”

“Can it be rescinded?” he asked quietly.

“You want to spend Christmas with my mother, my brothers, their wives and I will repeat - my brothers?” she clarified. “Dinner will be _thirty_ people. Are you sure you want to commit to that?”

“I’m sure,” he said confidently.

There was a lot of subtext in their conversation about more than just their plans for Christmas day.

“I think a day among the Scully clan wouldn’t be so bad,” he said with a small smile. “You turned out okay. They can’t be all be like Bill.”

Scully sighed. “They’re really not but I feel like I should warn you that there will be other parishioners from the church there.”

“Like Tom Bennett, his new wife and their _family_?” Mulder asked. As she pressed her lips together to attempt not to confirm nor deny that fact, Mulder saw through her and groaned loudly. “Seriously?”

“Jerrod isn’t confirmed for the dinner but his mom and stepdad are,” Scully replied. “I doubt he’ll come since-”

“He forced himself on you in front of your boss and your-” Mulder stopped at that and she raised an eyebrow. “Boyfriend.”

“You’re far too _old_ to be someone’s boyfriend, Mulder,” she replied with a grin and he frowned. Scully sat on the couch next to him and looked at him with concern. “Are you asking to come because you’re worried about his behaviour if he’s there?”

Mulder shook his head. “No…. I think I wanted to have a better Christmas than my last.”

“You mean flying out to San Diego to see me and meet Emily?” she asked.

Mulder shook his head. “It was actually mind blowing to see you with Emily. I wish… I wish so much that I could help you find that but no… I was alone Christmas morning. I had been waiting for you to call me back but you didn’t. Then when you asked me to come out there… I don’t have any right to say that was hard for me but it was.”

She understood his side to some degree. He had kept a huge secret from her to try to protect her. He called the men who took her ova ‘medical rapists’ which was a difficult label to swallow. She didn’t want to think of herself as a victim of one more crime from these men.

“Mulder, I’m not saying this to be harsh or because you’re not welcome but I am going to be very clear,” she began in a soft tone and he nodded for her to continue. “I can’t babysit you all day. If you come, you have to be your own man about it.”

He opened his mouth to reply but then closed it again.

“I want to have a nice day with my family and I have expectations from them that can’t be disrupted by a last minute ‘case’ you come up with,” she explained as she put case in bunny ear quotes. “Can you do that?”

“I’ll man up for a day,” he promised. “Tell your mom to set the table for one more.”

“Bill will be delighted,” she replied and they both laughed sarcastically.

 

***** *** *****

 

Georgetown had white sparkling snow blanketing most sidewalks with white twinkle lights adorning every deciduous tree that lined the streets. The temperature had risen above freezing but the cold air nipped at their noses as they walked back from Scully’s apartment to a nearby cathedral.

A living nativity was going to be performed and there was a cafe they had frequented that sold ‘ultimate hot chocolate’ that Mulder described as hot chocolate on steroids. They went the first year they worked together after her father had passed. One giant mug of the sweet delight would satisfy a sugar craving for months. Or until Valentine’s day chocolates went on sale and Mulder brought a bag of Hershey’s kisses to the office to leave on Scully’s keyboard as a strange flirtation. It was a weird ritual they had developed in their friendship that they had both come to accept as not normal for most agents but within their realm of ‘normal’.

“We’re walking twenty minutes in this weather to see a living nativity?” Mulder clarified as he scratched his chin with his gloved hand.

“And for the hot chocolate,” she reminded him.

“We usually go after Christmas,” Mulder replied as they approached the cathedral church. “Side question, why don’t you attend this church in your neighbourhood?”

“I…” she paused as she tried to come up with an answer that he could understand. “I go where my mother goes…”

“St. Augustus is a thirty-five minute drive some Sundays,” he said as they followed the path that was marked for attendees of the service. “I know this because you mention it every time it does take that long.”

“Father McCue gave a moving sermon about forgiveness last year,” Scully said as they got in line. She fished a ten dollar bill out of her jacket with her gloved hand and sniffed at the cold air. “It was after we found Emily… and lost her… I felt comfort in the words he spoke. Even though many of the churches in Georgetown and downtown Washington have architecture I admire or would be less concerned if I didn’t attend at least once a month….”

“Even though?” he coaxed her gently. “What?”

“My faith isn’t tied into a place or the people,” she said simply as they waited in line. She adjusted the toque on her head slightly and sniffed again. “But I’ve found comfort in the routine of attending church with my mother when I can.”

“Organized religion in itself is something I feel in my core preys on the weak for their money and time,” he began. “But how it’s comforted you through harder times should be something I appreciate more.”

“You don’t appreciate it?” she clarified.

“I suppose I feel a little jealous,” he admitted and gave her a wry grin. “As someone who benefits from the faith you have in things I don’t understand, I shouldn’t really question your motives, should I?”

She tapped his chest with her finger and shook her head. “No, you really shouldn’t.”

As a brash moment in a display of minor affection, Mulder suddenly took her hand in his and waited in the crowd for the service to begin. Tall space heaters were lit up along the pathway and he pulled her closer to him to stand near the warm air expelling from the flame in its cylindrical container.

She thought about how far they had come in the last year. She didn’t mind the minor touches during emotionally heightened moments and the comfort they took in one another after hard cases however this was different. This was a kind of affection she hadn’t experienced publicly since her last serious boyfriend and it felt nice, surprisingly.

“Are they bringing livestock onto the church grounds?” he whispered in her ear. A loud whine from a donkey echoed in the distance. “Nice.”

An actor approached the line as he waved a bell, dressed in full costume. Except the costume was relative to the late 18th century America and not ancient times of Nazareth or Judea. When she read in the brochure that it would be ‘as in the time of George and Martha Washington’, she knew she needed to bring Mulder this year. Even with his disdain for organized religion, he would have to appreciate the theatrics of it all.

“Hear ye, hear ye,” an actor announced as he rang a bell. “Caesar Augustus declares that there will be a census! Everyone will be counted and must return to their native towns. Let this be known to everyone!”

A young woman in Colonial dress approached while another actor exited the small balcony off the church second floor with a bright light shining behind him.

“Greetings!” the actor playing the angel called and the crowd turned to watch her. The angel was in Colonial dress but all white with a halo instead of a hat and large wings on his back. “You who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you!”

The actress approached the line of people and cowered at the sight of the angel.

“Oh my god,” Mulder laughed as he realized what the play was. “This is going to be awesome.”

Scully stifled a laugh. “Last year they were hippies.”

“I’m kind of mad at you that this is the first time I’m experiencing this,” Mulder replied as the play worked around them. “But this is amazing.”

“Do not be afraid, Mary. You have found favour with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus,” the angel called over the crowd.

“Convenient,” a man from behind them muttered and Scully watched his wife nudge him.

She sympathized greatly with the cynicism towards religion but this performance was supposed to be a fun experience. If she could read Rocky’s manifesto to Mulder with a straight face and discuss the possibilities of what truths could be in it, he do this for her. Tit for tat.

“How will this be?” the actress playing Mary asked with a proper Colonial accent. She had a white shall around her arms and a flowered bonnet over her hair that had been styled in custom with the time. “Since I have no husband?”

As Mulder stood behind Scully, he moved his free hand to her backside and gave it a squeeze. She nudged him and tried to focus on the nativity play in front of them. She enjoyed coming each year to see the take the church put on and the actors were usually quite talented. For a local production, it was enjoyable.

Each scene of the play was just as impressive as the next and Scully could tell even Mulder appreciated the theatrics because he was silent through most of it. She told herself that if he could watch the story for what it was, an interpretation of the birth of a saviour instead of tearing it apart, they could enjoy themselves. She had expected him to grumble and make sarcastic comments but instead, he surprised her.

After the last scene as the angels called Glory to God in the highest, the crowd disbursed and they were free to reward themselves with one overly sweet but traditional hot chocolate.

“Do you believe in the birth of Christ being a miracle?” Mulder asked as they waited in the cafe for their drinks. She paused as she shed her jacket and gloves to give him a look as though he knew the answer. “Here me out. Miracles?”

“They happen every day,” Scully answered. “God’s hand can be witnessed in all things, Mulder. I’m surprised a believer of so much even has to ask me that.”

“I mean for you,” he clarified as he took off his toque and gloves. His jacket hung on the chair behind him and he looked at her with his mussed hair and hopeful smile. “Do you believe you would witness one for yourself?”

She looked down at her hands folded on the edge of the table. “I think I have had a few already.”

“I don’t mean waking up from your coma or surviving a disease that was given to you,” he said quietly.

He took her hands in his across the small round table and brought her fingers to his lips to kiss them. It was another public display of affection in another place they had been seen before but not as a couple.

“I guess we’ve seen so much that could be interpreted as confirmation for the paranormal,” he said. “It confirmed my faith that there is more in the world than science has explained. I’ve also been working with you long enough that I know you can break apart these anomalies and make sense of them.”

“That’s the kind of flattery that I was looking for after we got assigned to Kersh by the way,” Scully pointed out.

He shook his head with a smile. “I was hoping you’ve seen enough miracles in your life to keep your faith alive too. I’m not saying I understand the need for an organized religion. I guess I was wondering where you draw your faith from and if you find it stronger at this time of year?”

“Does your faith in what is paranormal feel stronger depending on the time of year?” she countered and he opened his mouth to respond but didn’t.

A waiter arrived to the table and Scully sat up straighter in her chair to allow him to put their drinks down.

“The Christian faith follows a calendar by which some events are more impressed upon to its followers. At Easter and Lent, Catholics and Christians sacrifice pleasures as a testament to their faith,” he said. She could hear a monologue approaching in the tone he was setting and she saw the glimmer in his eyes as he was about to lay down a long speech. “In the same respect, Muslims practice Ramadan with fasting from dawn until sunset.”

“Mulder, Ramadan is more than fasting,” Scully began. “Muslims attempt to refrain from any sinful behaviour that may negate their reward from fasting including false speech. It’s a wonderful show of self-discipline and devotion.”

“You sound like you admire it,” he noted.

“I admire the dedication,” she replied as she took her straw and ran it through the whipped cream on top of her mug. She licked the tip with her tongue and felt satisfied at the rush of sugar into her system. “I will forfeit chocolate and liquor during Lent but I still eat during the day. Their devotion to faith is more than admirable to me. I wish sometimes I had that strength.”

“You’re not going to say you should refrain from sinful behaviour with me, are you?” Mulder teased but she could see his worry.

“No,” she replied with a smile. “I have my faith pretty cemented in catechism. I just mean that the Christian calendar isn’t the only one asking for sacrifices or devotion. I’m sure all faiths go through fluxes of a full spiritual cup or a low.”

“I was just posing the question,” he replied simply and took a sip of his hot chocolate. “This is really like crack and I think we need to open a file on what they put in this.”

“Mulder the cafe owner already told you she wouldn’t give you the recipe,” she reminded him.

He looked towards the counter where the simple hot chocolate sat in a soup well before they added their secret ingredients with the same face he often had towards evidence he wanted to ‘borrow’ from unwilling suspects or crime scenes. His eyes travelled over to the take out mugs.

“ _No_ ,” she said. “If you try to sneak any of that out of here they won’t let us come back and I _like_ coming here. Before you can even say you won’t get caught, I know you wouldn’t be able to pour that giant fishbowl of a hot chocolate into a take out cup without making a mess. I _know_ you.”

He made a disappointed face. “Finish your crack drink.”

 

  
***** *** *****

 

As they walked back to Scully’s apartment building through Oaks Park, snow began to fall again from the sky. Black, wrought iron lamp posts with round, bright bulbs lit up their pathway and beyond the path stood large pine trees. Their branches were heavy with snow, with their dark green tips attempting to break through to prove their resilience against the winter.

The air felt cool on her face but she didn’t feel the chill in her bones she usually felt at this time of year. Maybe it was the company or the hot chocolate in her belly. Mulder looked up at the sky as the white flakes fell heavily on their shoulders and then smiled at her. It was the first time she had seen him consistently happy in months.

“Christmas time suits you,” she told him with a smile.

“This has been a good one,” he said. “Better than last…”

She wondered if he was still thinking about Emily from their conversation earlier.

“Mulder,” she began with a sigh.

“Up until that case in Home, I never saw you as a mother before. Meeting Emily really shocked me because what if that’s the life you should be living and I’m keeping you from it? I know I pushed the court for you to adopt her but she’s gone and now you’re just doing desk work when you should be doing so much more.”

“I’m not unhappy in my life-” she began.

“Scully,” he cut her off. “I am not saying we should run away together and adopt fifty children. I’m just saying that I want to be the reason you’re happy instead of the reason you aren’t.”

Her chin clenched and she looked at him with a sad smile. He was the reason she was happy but how could he not know that by now?

“Oh.”

“I don’t want to keep you from what you’re meant to do,” he told her earnestly. “I worry sometimes I might be.”

“What if I was a woman who chose her own life?” she countered.

“Even now?” he said as they continued down the path. “Working under Kersh? Not being a doctor?”

Scully stopped in her tracks and pulled on Mulder’s jacket. He looked at her reluctantly and she used his collar to pull him down for a kiss. As their lips parted, she put two hands firmly on his chest and pushed him hard. Mulder’s eyes widened as his balance went with the force and he landed in a cushy snowbank.

“Hey!” he cried in protest. He looked around the snow he had fallen in and made a resigned face. “Actually, this was pretty soft.”

“Would you stop?” she said as she stood between his feet. “I’m fine. I’m happy. We still have things we want to find and I’m not going anywhere until we do. Do you hear me, Fox Mulder?”

He nodded as he tried to sit up. “I’m just bracing myself for Christmas-”

“Don’t,” she stopped him. “Bill won’t start something on the holiday as per instruction from his wife, thank god for Tara, and so don’t you go there either. Unless you’re trying to stop whatever we’ve started-”

“ _No_!” he cut her off and pulled her hand as he sat in the snow. “Not at all. Did you really have to push me into a snowbank to prove your point?”

She smiled down at him. “Yes.”

Mulder used his long arms to pull her onto the snow next to him and she cried out as the sharp cold made contact when it snuck under her jacket.

Mulder climbed on top of her and they wrestled with handfuls of snow as each person tried to get the upper hand. Scully flipped him onto his back as they maneuvered sideways and they tumbled down the bank into the park where signs asked pedestrians to stay off.

They rolled around on the ground a few more times and Scully felt delighted when she found herself on top. He laughed as she straddled his chest and smiled triumphantly at her. She cried out in shock when his gloved hand made contact with her bare back under her jacket. Scully took a handful of snow and threw it towards his face before standing up and running back towards the path. He pushed himself up and ran after her before almost slipping on some ice.

“Truce!” he called out and panting to catch his breath and find his footing. “Truce.”

There was snow stuck to her pants, on her toque and in her hair. She felt her cheeks were red and her breath was slightly laboured from the tussle.

“A _real_ truce or you’re going to dump cold water in the shower tomorrow truce?” she asked.

“Scully I would _never_ , although that is a good one,” he promised and crossed his heart to make an X. “True truce.”

He kissed her softly but full of promise. The kisses that Mulder gave her always left her wanting more. His mouth tasted like the sweet chocolate he drank mixed with him. It was delicious.

“I think I need to be put to bed,” Scully mused with an arch of her eyebrow.

The snow sticking to her jacket and hair should have been chilling her bones but instead she felt a warmth through her belly at the anticipation of his body against hers. She wanted him to strip her naked and make her quiver. She felt the prospect of desire bubble inside.

Mulder’s hands encircled her waist and pulled her flush against him. “I’ll do more than that.”


	15. Snowmen and Old Tropes

**Monday, December 21st**  
**Margaret Scully’s House**  
**Bethesda, Maryland**  
**11:45 a.m.**

 

Several cars parked on the Maggie Scully’s driveway had alerted them that the extended family had arrived. The home that Margaret and William Scully purchased in Bethesda was a sprawling Victorian home with five bedrooms, seven bathrooms and a full basement that Ahab had renovated to be a proper rec room for the kids. Granted, the home was far too large for two retirees but they were the kind of parents that refused to downsize when their children left for university or a placement with the Navy.

Margaret Scully had refrained from altering the bedrooms her children once inhabited too much. The linens were replaced and some of the teenage decor had been updated but Dana could walk into any space and still feel the territory that Charlie, Bill or Melissa had set out as their own. Bill’s room still had much of his Annapolis memorabilia on the walls along with his wedding photos and a picture of him standing on the dock next to his first posting. Charlie’s room had a fresh coat of paint and a new bed but the pictures on the walls were all ones he had taken during high school. While the relationship between Charlie and Ahab had been strained since he left Annapolis before graduation to attend an architecture design school on the West Coast, Maggie had always tried to maintain that he was welcome in Bethesda.

The bedroom that Dana and Melissa had shared as teens had many of Dana’s academic awards on the walls along with Melissa’s front page article in the Saint Augustine High School Gazette covering the senior class protests to allow ‘casual Fridays.’ When Dana returned to this bedroom, she could still picture Melissa sitting on her bed and painting Dana’s nails. She would tell her younger sister about the date that she broke curfew for. In typical Bill Scully Jr. fashion, she had been ratted out for the late entry and grounded. Melissa always assured Dana it was worth it.

Scully touched the cross around her neck and said a silent prayer for her older sister. She would have liked to have seen Mulder around their table at Christmas.

Mulder looked over the steering wheel as the car idled on Maggie’s driveway and took a long breath.

“So we’re _just_ here for lunch?” he clarified.

They were able to leave the office early and had an extra hour to spend with Scully’s family after all the overtime they put in during their surveillance case.

“Yes,” Scully replied flatly and Mulder held up his hands in defense. “You can take the car back to work and I’ll be happy to get one of my brothers to drive me back.”

Mulder shook his head quickly. “I already told your mom I was coming. If I don’t show up, when I do see her again, she’ll look at me with those ‘I’m trying not to be disappointed’ eyes that you both somehow have perfected.”

Scully pressed her lips together. “Mulder, I said-”

“I’m gonna man up,” he promised and turned the car off. “I’ll man up so much you’ll think I’m a Scully woman.”

“Did you just liken Scully women to being stronger than men?” she asked with a grin.

Mulder pulled her hand to his lips and kissed the back of her gloved hand. “I have witnessed the Scully women do amazing things. You’re like the bar to which all others are measured against.”

“That’s a mixed metaphor,” she said with a laugh.

He kissed her glove again and looked at her with hopeful eyes.

“I’m not annoyed at you so you can stop sucking up now,” she said but she wasn’t minding at all that he pulled her jacket back to kiss the inside of her wrist. “ _Mulder_ … I can’t go in to lunch feeling fluttery about you.”

“This isn’t a business lunch,” Mulder said as he pushed her sleeve up further. “What if we go upstairs and break in your bed from teenage years while they make lunch like a bad 90s trope?”

Scully pulled her hand away and took a long breath. “Not a chance.”

She opened her car door and picked up the tin of baked goods she brought with her to work. As she made it up the stairs to her mother’s front door, Mulder caught up to her and rang the bell.

“If you aren’t going to fool around with me on your childhood bed, you have to at least agree to let me feel you up in your brother’s room,” Mulder murmured.

“That could be negotiated,” Scully replied breathily and the door opened with Tara on the other side.

“Merry Christmas!” Tara squealed as she held a one-year-old Matthew on one hip. “Matthew say hi to Auntie Dana!”

“Hi,” Matthew whispered and wrapped his hand around Tara’s neck. “Momma momma momma.”

“Come in,” Tara said and stepped back into the hallway.

Scully stepped in first and gave her sister-in-law a kiss on the cheek before shedding her jacket, gloves and shoes. She took a few steps further into the foyer and looked around at the quiet house. “Where’s Mom? And the boys? Where are Bill and Charlie?”

Tara handed the one-year-old to Scully and gave Mulder a quick hug. Scully was surprised to see Mulder give her a pat in return instead of looking panicked.

“Uh, she is getting Charlie and Bill to remake all the beds,” Tara said with a conspiratorial grin on her face. “Something about not putting the proper sheets on the correct mattresses. I guess she had a way she wanted it and they did not meet expectations.”

Scully rubbed up Matthew’s back as he looked deep into her eyes. She felt her stomach clench as the baby leaned in to put an opened mouth kiss on her cheek. It was wet and warm but adorable nonetheless. “Thank you, Matthew.”

Mulder grinned at her before he looked around in wonder at the quiet of the house. “I thought there would be more kids running and making a ruckus.”

“Charlie’s kids are in the back building snowmen and forts with Mom’s fresh Maryland snow,” Tara said. “You want to go see?”

“I would join them but I’m in a knock off Armani,” Mulder replied as he held up the lapels of his suit.

“Oh I forgot you’re not off work yet for the holidays,” Tara said as she led them towards the kitchen. “I thought you two looked pretty dressy for a family lunch. When is your last day?”

“Tomorrow,” Mulder said as he followed Scully and Tara. “The bureaucracy and federal law enforcement offices will be shut down for a week.”

Tara opened the door to the kitchen where Michelle was standing over a stove stirring a large pot. “Look who’s here!”

Michelle glanced over her shoulder and smiled. “Dana!”

Scully walked over to her other sister-in-law so they could embrace while she continued to hold her nephew who had to be at least twenty-three pounds. It was heavy to anyone not used to it.

She adjusted the baby on her hip and glanced into the large pot. “Pasta for lunch?”

“No, I’m getting a head start on dinner,” Michelle said as she added another dash of oregano to the pot. “We have deli stuff on the kitchen table for lunch. Mom wants us to eat in the dining room.”

Scully glanced over her shoulder to the other food and then back to Michelle. “You look great, Mich.”

“Did Mom tell you about our new healthy living?” Michelle asked. “It’s all going to shit - sorry Matthew - now that we’re here but I feel great. You look so nice. Sorry, I’m rambling. I can’t wait to hear all about your last case - Mom said you were doing a stakeout! Did I just bust you for sharing secrets? Did you bring your man candy with you or did you leave him at the Hoover building to sulk without you?”

Scully stifled a laugh as Mulder cleared his throat.

“Hi,” he said and waved one hand awkwardly. “Am I the man candy or was that about Skinner?”

Scully shook her head with a grin. “Michelle this is Fox Mulder.”

“Sorry about the man candy line,” Michelle replied witha laugh. “Tara told me you were cute and it’s nice to be able to tease Dana about anything.”

“Michelle!” Tara scolded as her cheeks flushed and Scully felt the second-hand embarrassment from across the kitchen.

Mulder laughed awkwardly and she saw his panic face begin to emerge.

“So… I think I’ve been told that you don’t like to be called Fox,” Michelle said with a knowing grin. “So, we just call you Mulder?”

“You know Maggie and my mom are the only two women alive who get away with that,” Mulder said.

“Three,” Scully muttered.

“Three? Who’s that?” Mulder asked. Scully gave him a ‘you know who’ look and his cheeks pinked. “Fine…three.”

“I’d love to know who the third one is. I’m Michelle, by the way,” she introduced herself as she extended a hand to shake Mulder’s. “Obviously. I’ll just call you Mulder.”

Scully found herself swaying as she was holding Matthew and he slipped one hand inside her blouse to touch the skin above her breast. She looked at her nephew and he grinned at her like they were sharing a secret.

Tara approached Scully and pulled Matthew’s hand out from under her shirt. “No, buddy. She isn’t giving you any either.”

“What’s that?” Mulder asked as he grabbed a piece of cheese off one of the deli trays.

“I just stopped nursing Matthew,” Tara explained and Scully nodded while she watched Mulder for a sign of embarrassment but his panic face took over. “He’s not adjusting well. He thinks every breast could be open for business.”

“You just stopped nursing?” Scully repeated.

“Does your mom need any help moving things or…” Mulder said awkwardly before Tara could reply.

Scully handed him the tin of baked goods from the counter. “Take some of these up to my brothers.”

Mulder nodded and left the women to talk in peace. He wasn’t entirely used to women ignoring his existence and she could understand that but he also needed to accept that this was her family visit. Maybe tonight he would feign a headache to get out of having dinner with them.

When he left the kitchen, Scully grinned back at Matthew. “Boys are silly. Are you silly?”

Matthew laughed and clapped his hands. “Ya! Ya!”

Scully gave Matthew a few raspberry kisses on his neck before she glanced back at Michelle and Tara. “What?”

“So… Mulder?” Tara asked. “I thought you weren’t like that.”

“Things changed,” Scully replied with the most casual shrug she could muster.

She should have known bringing Mulder would have forced her to face the firing squad of her family with all kinds of questions like this.

“When?” Michelle asked eagerly.

“Um…” Scully flushed. “We were here, actually… and the mistletoe in the front hallway kind of… we had a kiss that was…”

“Was what?” Tara asked and Scully recognized that her sister-in-law wasn’t holding judgement or disapproval. She was interested and looked happy for her. “Dana?”

Scully’s cheeks flushed further. “It was intense. I felt bad at first… I thought that maybe he had done it out of some kind of superstition but I went into the bathroom where he was… and we had another kiss without pretense. And another...”

“Oh my god that’s so hot!” Michelle squealed and Tara nodded enthusiastically. “I think the last time Charlie made out with me in a bathroom was when we were trying to hide the last of the snickerdoodles from the kids.”

“You made out after eating snickerdoodles?” Tara asked and Michelle shrugged. “I definitely would make out after eating snickerdoodles.”

“I think they’re up there with other sensuous foods with oysters and chocolate covered strawberries,” Michelle deadpanned and they shared a laugh.

Maggie entered the kitchen with a satisfied look on her face. “Are you three getting along better than the men upstairs?”

Michelle nodded. “Yeah, Mom we were just dishing about Dana’s man candy.”

Maggie gave Michelle a look. “We don’t call men man candy any more than we call women something else objectifying, Michelle.”

“Thank you,” Scully spoke up as she shed her suit jacket. She hung the garment on the coat rack by the door and folded her arms under her breasts. “It’s not about how he looks.”

“That's right, Dana never cared about looks but we can agree he’s a very handsome man,” Maggie agreed and Scully gave her mother a look. “That being said, she doesn’t have to share the details of her man candy.”

“Mom!” she cried.

Maggie shrugged. “I was being supportive, Dana.”

Michelle and Tara cackled and Scully couldn’t help but laugh. This was the side of Maggie that her brothers didn’t see often. This was the side that let her guard down a little and appreciated a laugh when propriety wasn’t necessary. Perhaps it was where her children got their rebellious streaks from.

“Dana,” Michelle started. “Mom said he was coming and I didn’t expect it to be so…”

“What?” Scully asked as she walked over to put Matthew down in his playpen near the kitchen table. “Expect what?”

“I mean, how do you get any work done around that man?” Tara asked with genuine interest. "He is _very_ good looking."

"I won't tell Bill you said that," Scully laughed.

Michelle laughed. “Yes! Is it just entirely distracting?”

"Maggie rubbed her daughter’s back. “Dana was never easily distracted.”

Scully shook her head at her mother. “I worked with Mulder for six years before anything happened-”

“ _Six_ years?” Michelle and Tara said in unison.

She rolled her eyes and looked past her sisters-in-law to see Mulder outside with her brothers and nephews. With an ill-fitted snow suit, a pair of boots that probably belonged to Ahab and a toque over his head, Scully could still see the smile on his face as he rolled the snowball past Charlie’s oldest son, Aiden.

“Dana?” Tara prompted. "What are you looking at?"

“Mulder is outside,” Scully replied.

The women gathered around the window to see Mulder, Bill and Charlie helping Aiden and Sean as they built a line of snowmen next to the fort they had abandoned. Mulder was grinning as he helped Sean stand up after falling repeatedly.

Aiden could be heard laughing through the window as Sean fell time and time again. Bill was looking on with a cautiousness that Scully recognized.

“I would love to know how they talked Fox into that,” Maggie said with a laugh. “That coat looks familiar.”

“Maybe they found some of Dad’s stuff instead of remaking the beds,” Michelle said quietly.

The women were quiet for a moment as they thought of the late William Scully.

“That’s definitely Dad’s coat,” Tara spoke up.

Scully, Michelle and Maggie hummed in agreement as they watched Charlie roll a large snowball towards Mulder. Even Bill was smiling as he helped Mulder stack the body of the snowman up.

“That means they didn’t do what I asked,” Maggie said in realization and sighed. “For two men with naval training, neither of them follow orders very well.”

Scully gave her mother a sympathetic look. “I’ll go check on the beds, mom.”

“Would you mind, Dana?” Maggie asked in relief. “My fingers don’t like the cold. It’s why I asked them in the first place.”

Scully put her hand on her mother’s arm in understanding. “We should probably break up the snowman fun if Mulder and I are going to make it back to the Hoover Building by 1:30.”

“We’ll break up the fun and get lunch on the table if you do the beds,” Michelle offered.

Clearly, Scully’s job would be the easier one. She walked up the stairs of the house and skipped the second last step to avoid hearing the usual loud creak from the warped wood under the stair. Ahab had replaced the wood twice before Maggie insisted that he leave it, telling him that it added character to the home.

The kids in the Scully family knew to avoid it when you wanted to sneak up and down the steps without being heard. Anyone else who frequented the home wouldn’t develop such a strange habit.

Inside Bill’s old room laid the half-made bed and an almost empty tin of brownies. Scully broke a piece off one of the remaining brownies, popped the chewy confection in her mouth and got to work on the bed. She couldn’t picture the conversation that led to Bill, Charlie and Mulder agreeing to build the snowmen together or how they made it outside without the women in the kitchen knowing. No one looked angry or coerced but it was a strange notion for her to see that kind of camaraderie between her oldest brother and anyone Scully dated. Mulder was no exception to that rule.

Scully finished making Bill’s bed and heard the creak from the stairs. “I’ll be down in a sec, Mom!”

Mulder appeared in Scully’s doorway with his suit in hand. He was dressed in a pair of sweatpants and sweater that Scully guessed were possibly Charlie’s, being that they were an inch too short. “Not Mom, just me.”

“Who’s clothes are those?” Scully asked with a smile as she picked up the tin and walked across the hallway to Charlie’s room.

Mulder followed her slowly. “Charlie’s pants, Bill’s sweater and my undershirt. I think the boots and jacket were your dad’s.”

“You okay?” she asked as she glanced over her shoulder.

”I might have pulled something when I picked up that snowball,” he groaned as he rubbed his lower back with one hand. “Your nephews are good kids. Which one watched Babe fifteen times a day?”

“That would be Aiden. He kind of hates that movie now,” Scully replied. She walked over to the opposite side of the bed to do the other half of the fitted sheet while trying to ignore Mulder who was clearly studying her carefully. “You guys looked like you were doing pretty good out there.”

Mulder shrugged. “It fell on me a couple times… or maybe Bill dropped it on me.”

Scully looked over her shoulder again as she pulled the fitted sheet over the second top corner. “My room is at the end of the hall next to the master suite if you want some privacy. There’s a small bathroom if you need it.”

Mulder left quietly and she heard her bedroom door close. She had a fleeting moment of regret for being dismissive but she had explained to Mulder that she was there to visit family. He assured her almost indignantly that she was overthinking it all.

She tucked the top sheet into the corners, laid the quilt over the top of that and a warm duvet. She laid the pillows at the head of the bed and gave it a final appraisal before making her way down the hall to where her nephews would be sleeping.

Mulder was standing in his boxers, white shirt and his dress shirt halfway up his shoulders as he looked at the pictures on the wall. One in particular caught his eye as he stood reading the newspaper article that Melissa had framed about Dana Scully winning an award in physics in a national competition. She closed the door behind her so Mulder would have some privacy - not that he would ever mind if anyone watched him change.

“Have you always been so damn smart?” he asked as he turned to look at her. He pointed his thumb at the article. “You had some stiff competition. The author of the article mentions _twice_ you were one of three girls there.”

Scully sighed. “I was one of eight women in my graduating class at med school. The reality is that not enough women go into science.”

“Maybe if they knew how cool and dangerous a job it could be. Chasing down government conspiracies with a piece of man candy,” Mulder quipped.

“You heard that?” Scully groaned.

“I think that’s what inspired your brothers to want to play outside in the snow,” he replied as he walked over to the desk next to her old bed. “Is this where you dreamt up Einstein’s Twin Paradox?”

It actually wasn’t. It came in a sleep-deprived moment after she decided that an act of bold defiance was needed against the ultimate authority on physics. She wanted to argue what science was against and the theory of time travel that had been so widely looked down upon. She didn’t want to go with her peers and agree with more other well-known scientists. She wanted to challenge what was known and maybe in turn, that could help people.

“It might have been during a lecture at school,” she replied with a shrug. “I was twenty-three and very bold in my ideas.”

“You’re still pretty bold,” he teased as he turned to sit on the edge of the desk.

Scully thought about the closed door and the squeaky stair before she approached Mulder. He pulled her in between his thighs and put his hands on her lower back above her backside. She put her hands on his forearms and rubbed the thin layer of hair over his muscles with her thumbs. Mulder kissed her forehead and she felt the fluttery feelings of desire bubble up again.

“This is nice,” he commented.

Maybe it was the chocolatey confection in her system or the sight of Mulder playing outside with her nephews as they worked on the snow together but she was feeling inspired. He wore ill-fitting clothing for the sake of ensuring he spent some time with them and these were small gestures that went a long way for her. Mulder was a man of many small gestures and big stupid decisions that could lead to his life being risked for the greater good.

She wanted to do something… Then she remembered she was a grown up and could do as she pleased. She grinned at him and pulled his hands from her backside before kneeling down.

“Uh… Scully?”

“Yes?” She pulled his half-hardened cock through the fly of his boxers and looked up at him through her lashes. She gave his flesh a reaffirming squeeze and felt him harden in her hand. “You were saying something?”

Mulder’s hands were hovering over the edge of her desk as if he didn’t know what to do or where to touch.

Her tongue gave a precursory lick up the underside of his dick, past the small scar from his circumcision to his head. He tasted salty already and smelled like the soap from his morning shower.

“ _Scully_ ,” he whispered as her lips enveloped the tip and slid down his shaft.

A low grunt came up from his chest as she hollowed her cheeks to increase the suction. Her mouth moved up and down a few times before she took the base of his dick in her hand and held it tightly. He felt warm and impossibly hard against her palm. Mulder’s fingers gripped the edge of her desk and he sighed as she pulled her mouth back up to the tip. She swirled her tongue around the head before moving down.

“Uhhhh,” he breathed again as she began her repetitive motion sliding up and down his shaft.

She began to breathe through her nose as she took him in further to reach the base with her lips. Mulder’s moans became more frequent and she tasted the salty fluid as it dripped from the tip. Her mouth left his flesh quickly and he looked down at her in worry.

“What?” he asked in a panic.

“You have to be more quiet or someone will come up here,” she warned him quietly. She wasn’t sure how authoritative she sounded with her saliva glistening on his member but this was actually serious. “They might send B-”

“I got it,” he interrupted with a whisper.

Mulder nodded and reached his fingers to tentatively brush her hair back from her cheeks. It was a moment of tenderness during an act that could be construed to put him in a dominant standing. Yet even in a position on her knees, he never made her feel like she was subservient to him. He was looking at her with love and adoration which made her want to do this all the more.

She glanced over her shoulder to the door before taking him with her lips again. Mulder’s moans were muffled by his hand across his mouth. This wasn’t fellatio for extensive pleasure or foreplay. Scully was trying to help Mulder reach an end game. Watching him with her nephews was surprisingly endearing and made the fluttery feelings of desire begin. It wasn’t on their radar but watching Mulder with a child made her picture him with a child of their own. Something that made her feel sad and hopeful at the same time was fighting inside of her. She wanted to combat all of that with the boldness of this hasty tryst and the happiness she felt by being there with Mulder.

As she was swirling her tongue around the tip of his cock, she felt him start to tremble in her mouth. He was close. Mulder’s short nails scraped at the wood on the edge of her desk and he sighed the beginning letters of her given name.

Her tongue moved quickly across the underside of his cock where he was most sensitive as she hollowed out her cheeks. He felt good inside her mouth. As much as she wanted him, this was about his release, as he had selflessly done for her so countless times.

Mulder’s hips jerked and she pulled her mouth back as he started to come. She tasted the salty fluid on her tongue before she swallowed every drop. He let out a slow moan and just when she was about to look up at him with a grin, the squeak on the stair alerted her that they weren’t alone.

“Get dressed!” she whispered in a panic.

She stood up off the floor and wiped the edges of her mouth to search for the rest of his clothing. They were about to be discovered by someone who never avoided the squeaky stair which could include Bill, Maggie or her nephews. None of those people would be advantageous to show up right now.

“What?” Mulder asked.

Mulder tucked himself back in his shorts and stood with his dress shirt hanging off his shoulders without awareness they would soon have company. He was still hard and he looked like a satiated man.

“Get that look off your face,” she whispered as she looked around for his pants. She handed them to him but he was oblivious at the urgency. “ _Mulder_!”

“What?” he asked. He was grinning from ear to ear as he looked at his trousers lazily. “Why are you freaking out?”

A throat cleared in the doorway and Mulder pulled his shirt slowly closed as he grinned awkwardly over at Tara. Scully felt her cheeks flush. Mulder used her shoulders to maneuver her in between his state of undress to block Tara’s eyeline.

“Mom said it’s time for lunch,” Tara said with a grin.

Scully nodded and cleared her throat. “I’ll come with you.”

Mulder’s finger’s gripped her shoulder’s a little and she stopped walking. “Uh-”

“Okay, I’ll be right down,” Scully amended and her sister-in-law laughed.

Tara left them in Scully’s bedroom and she let out a long breath. The altered high from their dangerous liaison had left them and Scully only felt relief it wasn’t Bill that was sent upstairs.

“I think my life just flashed before my eyes,” he said from behind her.

Scully turned around and shook her head. “This is what being bold gets me.”

“ _I_ had a _great_ time,” Mulder quipped.

She sighed. “Can you get dressed and join us?”

He glanced down at his erection that was slowly deflating. “Uh, in a few minutes.”

“I’m going to… uh get a drink of water then head down,” she told him.

As the water in the sink reached her lips, Mulder pressed himself into her backside. She stood up slowly and saw the look in his eyes reflected back at her in the mirror.

“We don’t have time,” she admonished him for whatever he was obviously planning.

“What if _I’m_ feeling fluttery now?” he teased back, using her words from earlier.

Scully turned off the tap and spun around to face him. “You can get me later.”

“I will,” he promised as he gave her a determined look that made her chuff in laughter.

Mulder leaned down for a kiss and she allowed him to linger at her lips while she tried to calm the fire in her belly that wanted so desperately to have a release of her own. That was for another time.

“See you downstairs,” she said and left him in her room.

Fluttery feelings aside, she had lunch with family. Her hormones needed to cool and she had to look her family members in the eye as though they weren’t just doing what they were doing.

When she arrived at the bottom of the stairs and walked towards the kitchen, she could hear nothing but chatter that was of the ordinary for a family gathering. She shed her suit jacket and ran a hand down the front of her white blouse before entering the kitchen.

Aiden and Sean were asking Maggie for a brownie on their lunch plates. Michelle and Charlie were asking Maggie from over their sons’ heads not to give them any more sweets but the tone of voice wasn’t entirely serious. Tara was watching as she held Matthew on her hip as Bill loaded two plates for them. He was carefully making a plate the way Tara wanted it as Matthew clutched to his mother and watched his father in fascination. There was definitely a few people missing from this exchange. Ahab and Melissa would have been ignoring each other or fighting over how much chilli spice to put in the pasta sauce.

“Did you get it done?” Maggie asked as she approached the kitchen table.

“Pardon?” Scully asked as she glanced to Tara who was eavesdropping with a grin. “Oh, the beds! Yes.”

“You need to eat. And before you start, you will eat so don’t tell me you don’t have time,” Maggie told her gently as she handed Scully a plate. “Where’s Fox?”

Scully made a face and put a bun and some turkey on her plate. “He’ll be right down.”

“It’s so nice of him to come,” Michelle said with a grin and Scully knew immediately that Tara blabbed about what happened upstairs. “I mean for these events.”

“He’s getting a full-service lunch,” Tara piped up and Scully’s face was completely flushed. “Probably better whatever he gets at the Bureau, right Dana?”

Scully shook her head at her sisters-in-law. “Right.”

Charlie nodded and apparently oblivious to the joke. “He seems like a nice guy. I don’t know what Bill has such a problem about.”

Bill scoffed as he grabbed a bottle of beer from the fridge. “I have my reasons.”

Mulder entered the kitchen with his jacket in hand. “Hey Scully, where can I hang this?”

“ _That’s_ one of them,” Bill said. “You can’t call her by her first name while we’re all here?”

Scully opened her mouth to protest but Mulder held up a hand and grinned diplomatically. “I can definitely do that. I mean, if I said Scully right now, you might think I was talking to you and that _would_ be confusing.”

Bill scoffed again. “No-”

“Bill,” Tara warned.

“It’s just-” Bill began again.

“ _Bill_ ,” Charlie warned. Bill closed the fridge and left the kitchen with his beer and plate in silence. Charlie broke the silence. “Beer for you Mulder?”

“I have to get back to work,” Mulder replied.

“No one at the FBI has lunch time drinks anymore?” Charlie asked. “I thought the boys club of the government would be like the Navy. Men can do no wrong and the women are expected to fetch the coffee.”

“I don’t _fetch_ coffee,” Scully said flatly as she put a scoop of Greek salad on her plate.

“And I’m definitely not one of those men who can do no wrong. Our boss is less than…” Mulder shook his head as he tried to find the words. “Our boss Kersh is less than… patient with me.”

“No more work talk,” Maggie announced. “Lunch.”

Scully glanced at Mulder. “Have a beer. I won’t tell.”

“You could share one with me,” Mulder proposed. Scully nodded in agreement and he took an amber bottle from the inside of the fridge door. “Shiner Bock, Mrs. Scully? Good choice.”

Mulder disappeared through the door into the dining room and Scully gave her mother an appreciative smile. The rest of the family exited the kitchen to have lunch in the dining room, leaving Dana and her mother alone.

“Thank you,” Scully said and it was for more than just the lunch.

“I’m glad you came, Dana,” Maggie told her. “It makes it easier at Christmas without Melissa and your dad when you’re all here.”

“I miss her too, Mom,” Scully confessed. “I think she would have liked to have seen Mulder here.”

“I think she would have told you it was about time,” Maggie said with a grin and Scully shook her head. “I know it wasn’t like that before. But I’ve never seen a man visit an oncology ward in the middle of the night for someone he was ‘just friends’ with.”

Scully narrowed her eyes. “He did what?”

“Fox never told you?” her mother asked and Scully shook her head.

During her treatment, a bomb could have gone off in the hospital but she would have slept through it due to fatigue and her body shutting down as her cancer continued to fight its way through her system.

“The nurses told us one morning,” she explained. “He had been sleeping by your bed in the night, leaving before first rounds.”

Scully pulled her chin back and looked at her mother in disbelief. “Who is us?”

“Father McCue, Bill and myself,” Maggie replied.

She couldn’t imagine the look on Bill’s face when the nurse told them about Mulder spending the night. She felt slightly embarrassed but also appreciative that he was there.

“I guess that explains Bill’s attitude…” Scully said thoughtfully.

Maggie laughed. “Melissa told us after your disappearance that Mulder had feelings… I believed he felt guilty but I know and see how he loves you, Dana. It’s what you deserve.”

Her cheeks felt hot and she opened her mouth to reply but the words failed her.

“If this with you two is temporary-”

“No, Mom,” Scully stopped her. “Not for me. I don’t think it would be for Mulder either.”

“Then enjoy it and your brother will get used to it,” Maggie advised. “My oldest brother did about your father.”

Maggie gave her daughter a reassuring pat and Scully was left to contemplate how anyone could look at William Sean Curtis Scully as anything but worthy of a woman. Perhaps that was the role of older brothers, to weed out the weak, but it only felt intrusive and mistrusting. At the end of the day, her brother still looked at her like a reckless child instead of the grown woman who had graduated from medical school and become an FBI agent.

It was an enjoyable lunch to say the least. Scully ignored her brother’s face as she drank from the same bottle and they wished them a good night with a promise to see everyone tomorrow. Mulder promised to bring his own snow gear to play with Sean and Aiden which seemed to impress more than just Dana.

Unlike the feelings that lingered in her stomach after most family lunches, Scully felt happy as they drove back to the Bureau. They had enjoyed light conversation and avoided sensitive topics such as politics or religion. Mulder cleared the table before Maggie alerted them of the time and they drove back to the Hoover building with a comfortable silence in the air.

Mulder pulled into the parking stall that somehow started all of this and she took the keys from the ignition.

“What’s up?” he asked as he unbuckled his seatbelt to turn to her in the car.

“I appreciate what you did today with my family,” she told him as she did the same. “I know I told you that you had to be a grown man this week and fend for yourself-”

“Scully,” he started. “I’m not entirely inept at navigating familial situations. I shouldn’t have complained to make you doubt my abilities.”

“You did better than I expected and I appreciate that,” she thanked him.

Mulder leaned across the car towards her to break another rule they had set out for themselves when they started this romance. After their interlude in their old office, Scully had hoped they could keep things separate. Right now, she just wanted him to kiss her but this wasn’t the time or place. They could be spotted by the wrong person and outed. She worried it would infringe on them getting the X-Files back and Mulder would hold it against her in the future. This distracting feeling was dangerous to their future.

“What?” he asked as she leaned into him a little.

“I really want you to kiss me…” she started and his mouth inched towards hers. “But I don’t want us to get busted for something that could prevent us from getting the X-Files back.”

Mulder grinned a little wider. “You’re kind of the perfect woman, you know?”

Scully fought a smile. “Even when I disagree with your theories on space travel and alien life forms?”

“Would you believe that makes you even _more_ perfect?” he asked as he leaned in closer.

“No,” she answered quickly and he laughed before his lips captured hers.

He tasted like the beer they shared at lunch and something else that she couldn’t get enough of. When his tongue slipped past her lips, she threaded her fingers into his hair and held him there as their innocent kiss turned into something more heated.

When his hand slipped into the front lapel of her jacket, a car horn sounded in the distance and the kiss broke.

Mulder glanced around and shook his head at her. “One more for the road?”

Just as their lips met, another horn honked and Scully looked through the back window of Mulder’s sedan to see Kersh in his vehicle staring at them. He tapped his finger onto his wristwatch before driving his car to his reserved space.

“Well, shit,” Mulder whispered with a laugh.

“Do you think he saw us?” she asked as her heart raced in her chest but the man across from her looked less than worried. “Mulder, what if he saw us kissing in here?”

He shrugged. “Who cares if he did?”

“I think we better get upstairs,” Scully said as she searched for her purse at her feet.

“How much you want to bet he’s going to look at me with that sour look on his face for five minutes before he says anything?” he guessed.

His nonchalance scared her. If his attitude rubbed Kersh the wrong way, they could end up in Arkansas on manure detail or something worse.

Scully pushed on his chest and ran her tongue nervously across her upper lip. “Remember that getting away from Kersh and back on the X-Files was your top priority last summer when we walk into his office, okay?”

Mulder made a face. “I can be diplomatic.”

She frowned. “We’re going to end up on manure detail.”

He sat back in his seat and sighed. “On the bright side, we’ll be together.”

“Unless they split us up,” she pointed out.

“At _Christmas_?” Mulder said in mock offense.

Scully sighed and put her hand on the door. “If you’re not worried about getting back on the X-Files-”

“I am,” he cut her off. “I just don’t feel like kissing his ass, even if it is Christmas.”

She shrugged and handed him the car keys. “Might as well face the firing squad.”

“We’ll be all right,” he assured her. “I have one last ace up my sleeve that might save us from total career annihilation.”

As they walked towards the elevator banks, Kersh came into view. Scully could practically hear the sarcastic remarks in Mulder’s head.

“Agents,” Kersh said tersely.

“Hello, Sir,” Scully greeted.

“Will you be ready for our scheduled meeting in fourteen minutes?” Kersh asked.

They usually met on the third Monday of every month to submit progress reports on recent investigations and for Kersh to hand out another stack of background checks. Even though the meetings were thirty minutes long, they were exhausting.

“We’ve been preparing all morning,” Mulder assured him.

Kersh looked at Mulder with a frown as the elevator doors opened. “Nice shade of lipstick, Agent.”

Scully’s stomach sank but Kersh made no other comments.

Mulder grinned as they entered the car. “I thought it went well with my tie.”

Kersh snorted. “Not quite.”

“Yours isn’t bad,” Mulder noted innocently. “Goes with everything, I think.”

Kersh wiped at the edge of his mouth and looked at the pink makeup on his fingers. It was a long four and a half minute ride up to the ninth floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building.

 


	16. Office Christmas Parties

**Office Christmas Party**  
**Monday, December 21**  
**J. Edgar Hoover Building**  
**2:45 p.m.**

Mulder walked down the hallway with a satisfied smile on his face and his freshly printed reports in hand. He was feeling pretty great about himself today and the swagger in his step probably showed it.

He had made it through an afternoon with Scully’s family, played with her nephews and survived a family lunch. It was a personal best for Mulder as a son and a boyfriend.

He stopped in his tracks when he realized the qualifier he had just used without Scully’s prompting. A lover was someone who was purely for sex. A partner was an all-encompassing qualifier for a relationship but this was too new to go that far…. Maybe if they were living together. He went to family events. He and Scully spent enough time together to consider it a relationship so it had to be something like that.

Did it count if he hadn’t officially asked her?

The women in his past had all demanded some kind of title, ring or promise from him. Those women wanted the full package from him with the fat diamond, the big wedding, two kids and the Chocolate Lab. He knew deep down that the woman he was seeing romantically would want those things too but so far she seemed to forego labels and just accept things as they were. She was so far from every woman in his past and yet he would literally do anything for her health, happiness and safety. He gave up his sister for her cure for cancer and saved her from Antarctica. Over the course of the years, he had risked everything for the truth and for her. He didn’t know a label that could do her and their relationship justice when she was more than just a girlfriend or a significant other. She was his ‘everything’ but they didn’t make ‘his and hers’ mugs with those titles on them.

Maybe she was waiting for him to bring it up. She told him that he was her forever but his emotional maturity didn’t quite grasp if that was an official title.

Jesus, this was complicated. Scully seemed to be the kind of woman who wanted things as simple as possible. Maybe a title would simplify their status in a way that they could both understand. Scully was a scientist that appreciated categories and neat boxes with labels. If he had a sticker on his chest that put him into the “Boyfriend” box then listed his responsibilities and privileges, this might be easier.

“Fox,” a familiar voice called down the hallway and he cringed at the use of his first name. “Fox, there you are.”

Speaking of complicated.

“Hi, Diana,” Mulder greeted as he turned around. “Did you have a good weekend?”

Diana reached out to brush some lint off his suit and he kept his hands firmly at his sides so as not to encourage the action. “I did. I was wondering what happened to you after that unpleasant confrontation with Jerrod.”

“I found Scully and went home,” Mulder told her. “Speaking of-”

“That kiss on the dance floor was all anyone could talk about the rest of the evening,” Diana interrupted with a smile. “It’s been quite the salacious news this morning. I’m sure it will come up this afternoon at the office Christmas party.”

Scully and Mulder hadn’t been one to join in on the FBI festivities, including the mixers held in the bullpens over the years. Due to their location in the basement, their office party was normally a party of two. Mulder poured whiskey into their paper coffee cups, they worked on their reports with a slight buzz and took a long lunch at a pub nearby that served bread pudding. That had been their tradition since before her abduction but that definitely wouldn’t happen today.

They already took an extended lunch and instead of bread pudding, Scully sunk onto her knees and used her mouth on him in the bathroom off her childhood bedroom. That was definitely the best lunch he’d ever had in Bethesda.

Diana cleared her throat. “Fox?”

“Sorry,” he replied as he shook his head. He looked down at his watch with his file in hand. “I have a meeting with Kersh in four minutes. Did you need something?”

“Jeffrey almost threw this in the shredder this morning,” she said as she held up a file with an enticing smile. “He’s not interested in investigating it but if you’re not busy on Christmas Eve, I thought we could take a look.”

Mulder reached for the file and Diana pulled it closer to her chest. “Can I see?”

“I’m showing you this with the idea that we’ll go looking together,” Diana said conditionally and Mulder nodded immediately. She handed over the file. “Maurice and Lyda Bronstein killed themselves in a lovers’ pact eighty-one years ago and now haunt their mansion on Christmas Eve.”

“Who haunts on Christmas Eve?” Mulder noted as he read through the reports of people who had been trapped inside the house for days on end. “I mean, the spookiest time of year is Halloween, not Christmas.”

“You forget there was a story about the Ghosts of Christmas past?” Diana asked. “You’re getting rusty on the ninth floor.”

Mulder’s phone rang and he pulled it from his jacket pocket. “Mulder.”

“You have thirty-eight seconds to be on time or we end up on manure duty,” Scully hissed into the phone and hung up.

Mulder gave the file back to Diana quickly. “I gotta go.”

“Fox!” Diana called to him as he began to run down the hall. “Fox! Call me!”

Mulder entered the reception area of Kersh’s office just as his assistant was opening the door for Scully. The blonde whispered something to Scully that Mulder couldn’t quite make out but he could recognize the look on his partner’s face when she was about to rip someone to shreds.

“You want to say that again, Laura?” Mulder asked as he approached the women and slipping his fingers around Scully’s elbow. “I missed that.”

“Agents,” Kersh prompted and his assistant rolled her eyes at Scully before closing the door.

“Professional,” she muttered under her breath before they took the exhaustive eight steps towards Kersh’s desk.

“You have that report for me, Agent Mulder?” Kersh asked but it was more of a reminder to them why they were there. Mulder set the folder on the desk in front of their stern supervisor and sat in his chair next to Scully. “I see you’re reporting a fifteen per cent increase in efficiency into background checks for federal employees.”

Mulder nodded confidently. “I would say that an increase of applications pushed through the system is a sign of higher efficiency.”

“You’ve rejected thirteen per cent more applicants,” Kersh noted. “Compared to the other members in your office, this is a high number.”

“We’ve rejected a number of applicants tied to underground groups such as hyper-religious organizations,” Mulder replied sharply. “The very people the FBI has taken down in the past and we’ve ensured they’re staying out.”

Scully licked her upper lip nervously and Mulder watched as she began to try to explain themselves. “Due to the system that Agent Mulder and I have utilized by working together-”

“You’ve done things a little differently, I see that,” Kersh cut her off.

For a man who was so intent on propriety and order, he cut people off when they were speaking a lot.

“Has been effective,” she finished. “Agent Mulder and I have completed the work we were assigned.”

Kersh closed their progress report early and interlaced his fingers on the file. “I don’t think there’s any reason to keep you here any longer.”

“We can go back to work?” Mulder clarified.

“You can take off for the day,” their boss answered as he pushed their report to the side and began writing a note on the legal pad on his blotter. 

Scully and Mulder sat with surprised uncertainty and glanced to one another as they were unsure of what to do next.

“Sir?” she clarified.

“We’ll see you after the holiday,” Kersh replied. “Eight a.m. sharp.”

“Thank you,” Mulder said as he stood up and reached for Scully’s elbow.

“Agent Mulder, if you could hold back a moment,” Kersh spoke up as they began towards the door.

He gave Scully a panic face and she furrowed her brows at him before leaving the office quickly. Mulder turned back to his boss and lingered behind the chair he just vacated.

“Sir?” Mulder questioned when the door closed.

“The altercation with Agent Brinkley at the Winter Ball is under my purview. It happened at a work event and Agent Scully has the option to file a sexual harassment claim. She informed me this morning that she’s going to think about it,” Kersh began. “If she decides to, I want you to understand that she will need statements backing up any allegations in her report.”

Mulder shook his head once. “Wait. The FBI requires a man’s supporting statement for a woman filing a claim? He kissed her without her consent.”

“We don’t know the conversation they had on the dance floor,” Kersh told Mulder reluctantly. “If she invited any advances-”

“No,” Mulder cut Kersh off and a look of surprise crossed Kersh’s face. “No. Dana Scully is one thing but a tease is certainly not one of them. She has very clear, professional lines and Jerrod Brinkley crossed every single one of them.”

“Brinkley has claimed he witnessed you holding Agent Scully in an FBI elevator longer than necessary,” Kersh told Mulder as he read from a page. “I don’t know what your situation is-”

“She fell when the car moved and I caught her,” Mulder cut him off, putting his hands on his hips. “The fact that he’s pointing fingers at me for something while he’s being looked into for harassment says something, doesn’t it? He’s trying to divert some attention by making me look bad.”

“Agent Scully has already assuaged these claims he’s made against you,” Kersh replied.

“I got here right after Agent Scully did. When did you ask her all of this?” Mulder asked.

“I spoke with her while you were compiling your report,” Kersh answered as he took off his glasses. “I don’t want to look into you and Agent Scully more than I need to. It’s a headache I don’t want. Having you in my bullpen and taking off when you feel like it has done nothing but force me to reprimand you at every misstep. Right now, it’s Agent Brinkley that’s trying to highlight your misdeeds.”

“I can say that I have witnessed Agent Brinkley attempting to pursue Agent Scully in a romantic scenario and Agent Scully did explain to him that she wasn’t interested,” Mulder reported. “He did tell me at the Ball that he felt entitled to make a move on Agent Scully for… reasons.”

Kersh nodded slowly as he leaned back against his chair. “Put it in a statement and send it to my secretary by the end of the day.”

Mulder stood up. “Yes, sir.”

“And…” Kersh began and Mulder stopped as he moved from the desk. “Uh… about the lipstick.”

“The shade on my lips or yours?” he quipped. He was aware he sounded like a smart ass but he was willing to risk the reprimand since it was the holiday.

“Agent Mulder, “ Kersh warned and Mulder held up his hands in submission. “If you or Agent Scully decide to pursue a social scenario, the parking garage is not a place for a tryst.”

“Noted,” Mulder said with a nod.

“That’s all,” Kersh said as he sat up straight and opened a new file.

Mulder nodded once and left Kersh’s office quickly. As he entered the reception area, Laura stood up and leaned over her desk slightly.

“Agent Mulder,” she began. “I wanted to ask-”

“Did you see which way Agent Scully went to?” Mulder cut her off.

“She said she was leaving for the day,” Laura replied flatly. She smiled at him and changed her tone when she said, “So….What are your plans for Christmas Eve? I’ve got a bottle of Dom ready for a special occasion.”

“I think I’m doing something…Um…” he started and realized what she was doing. Mulder furrowed his brows at her and remembered the conversation he had with Scully about men and rejection. Somehow that applied to overzealous secretaries too. “I’m… seeing someone.”

“Since when?” Laura asked with a laugh.

He checked his watch to look at the date. “Since fourteen days ago. You said Scully said she was going home?”

Laura’s face fell. “Yes.”

“Thanks. Merry Christmas,” Mulder said with a wave of his hand as he walked out of the office.

Mulder went back to the bullpen in search of his partner. Agents were beginning to enjoy the spiked eggnog and music was playing loudly from a large stereo system in the corner. Garland adorned the metal bars that held the ceiling panels in a droopy, haphazard style and Mulder glanced around to see there was mistletoe hung in many places around the large space.

Since his time in the Violent Crimes Unit, he had been introduced to office Christmas parties, however, they were usually after hours. Mulder looked at his watch again and the FBI was still technically open for another forty-seven minutes.

He logged on to his computer and opened a file to begin typing his report about Agent Brinkley. Mulder looked at the cursor blinking on the screen, prompting him to begin typing. He wrote three or four sentences before looking around the busy space for Scully again.

Her desk was not the usual tidy space that she ensured at the end of each business day and he thought maybe there was hope she hadn’t left. He couldn’t tell if she was annoyed at him or she wanted to get away from Kersh’s secretary and that’s why she hadn’t waited.

“Hey Spooky,” Tolliver called to Mulder with a lopsided Santa hat on his head and his tie loose around his neck. Agent Tolliver was ‘one of the boys’ of the bullpen who liked to make off-colour remarks around Scully just for his own amusement. If Mulder thought the comments were bad, they were bad. “Where’s your lady?”

Mulder shook his head as he leaned back in his chair. “I was just about to ask you.”

Tolliver adjusted his hat. “Are you coming back later?”

“No,” he answered immediately with a shake of his head. “For what?”

Tolliver lowered his voice as he stepped closer to Mulder. “There’s a party that isn’t exactly sanctioned by the FBI but we’ve done it the last six years.”

He didn’t want to fall into his own stereotype for being paranoid but that sounded like exactly the kind of thing that he could get in trouble for. The kind of trouble that might stop him from getting the X-Files back.

“Uh-” he started.

Being a party to anything that wasn’t sanctioned by the FBI was usually right up his alley but that’s because it involved remote locations, paranormal activity and Dana Scully.

“C’mon,” Tolliver coaxed. “If we get busted, Fowley’s friend Halloren said she’d tell them Pruist signed off on it. Since he’s already in the doghouse, you know.”

Pruist was their recently suspended fellow agent who had assigned a stakeout detail to spy on his ex-girlfriend. Pile it on, boys.

“What’s one more nail in the career coffin, right?” he asked and Tolliver nodded. “I’ll think about it. I’m just going to see if Scully is still here.”

“I already told you, Spooky,” Tolliver said as Mulder got up from his desk. “The missus left ya.”

Mulder had not hoped for a statement to be more false since Scully said that she had cancer. He wasn’t a lost puppy without her but he did give her a ride to work that day. The least she could have done was call his cell and leave a message.

He looked around the agents that were crowding around a computer monitor at the back of the bullpen.

“Have you seen Agent Scully?” Mulder asked one of the female agents.

He couldn’t recall her name and he hated looking down at her lapel badge every time he forgot it. It looked like he was looking at her chest and that wasn’t his intention.

The female agent smiled at Mulder. “She left you a note on your desk, Agent Mulder.”

“Did she give you a ride this morning?” another female agent asked him with a tittering laugh he found annoying.

“No, I gave her one,” Mulder said quietly.

He wandered back towards his desk and decided to finish the report before leaving for the day. He checked his cell phone as he walked back and ignored the agents around him. The sooner he was finished, the sooner he could get Scully on her living room floor with the fire going and her legs wrapped around his waist.

As he logged back on to his computer, he looked around for a note or any sign of her. The top of his desk was empty and he checked the drawer where the melded dime and penny usually sat.

Underneath was a note with Scully’s legible handwriting. “M, Getting a few more stocking stuffers. x S.”

The closest place nearby that would satisfy Scully’s tastes for shopping would be the Nordstrom Store on 12th. She probably took a cab and would need to be picked up from there later.

As he worked on his account of the events, he remembered the first meeting in the elevator, the continuous calls on her personal phone and the comments he made during the last two weeks. They all seemed innocent enough on their own but when added up with the kiss, it sufficed as harassment. Mulder had an uneasy feeling about Brinkley from the moment they met but he wouldn’t qualify those instincts as important in his report. He could only account what he saw, heard and what Scully told him.

His desk phone rang just as he was finishing his report. “Mulder.”

“Mulder, it’s me,” Scully replied. “I’m finishing up at Nordstrom but I think I’ll have to come back here again.”

“Why?” he asked immediately without thinking.

“I left my list at home,” she said with a sigh as the busy store bustled around her and echoed through the phone. “Are you able to pick me up?”

“I’m just finishing my statement for Kersh,” Mulder replied.

“Your statement for what?” she asked.

“Apparently your sexual harassment claim means nothing without a witness,” he answered quietly. “I can send it and come get you.”

“Mulder… I wasn’t going to file a claim,” she replied.

“Why not?” he asked a little louder and a few people across the aisle turned to look at him. He turned his chair slightly. “He kissed you without permission. I saw it, a whole ballroom full of agents and politicians saw it. Why don’t you want to report this?”

“I don’t want to,” she answered flatly.

“Scully, the best thing that can come from all of this would be that he learns not to make inappropriate advances towards women and we stop him from doing it to someone else,” he pointed out.

“It goes on my file, too, Mulder,” she replied. “I don’t know… I need to think about it.”

“I’m sending my statement to Kersh, anyway,” he decided.

“It’s not your place to speak up for me,” she pointed out. “I don’t want something following me in my career because I couldn’t stand up for myself.”

“Maybe he only listens to a reprimand from a superior over the words of a woman who is clearly saying no,” Mulder countered. “Don’t rule out doing this. What if he does it to another woman?”

Scully let out a breath through her nose. “Kersh wanted my answer by end of business day and I’m not ready to make a decision on this. That should say enough that I am not prepared for it.”

“I’ll send my statement and maybe that will be enough,” he offered.

“Mulder….” she started.

He could hear the frustration in her voice but there was more than just what happened to Scully in this scenario. Men like Brinkley were predators and while they had the looks and charisma to disguise their advances as charm, if the moves he made were unwanted, it was wrong.

Brinkley tried to rationalize that because he witnessed Mulder touching her… it was totally different. He and Scully had a long standing relationship of trust. He would never do anything to make her uncomfortable.

“Look, a cab just pulled up here so I think I’m going to take it home,” she replied quietly. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“But we were going to-”

“Bye,” she said before the line went dead.

Mulder dialled Kersh’s line but it went straight to voicemail. He didn’t want to go against what Scully wanted but there was an injustice done to her. He needed to right that for her.

The man inside of him that couldn’t right a wrong done to his sister, countless women and Scully could stop something from occurring again. This felt like one more blow and added to all the wrongs done to her because it happened at a work event. What was worse, he was standing right there.

Taking himself out of the equation, what happened to Scully happens to women all over the world. She wasn’t the only woman that week who had been kissed by a man, unwanted. At least Brinkley didn’t grab her anywhere while he was kissing her…

Mulder tried to call Scully’s phone again but the line went straight to voicemail. For all the times he didn’t listen to her advice whether it be not to jump on a train carrying a bomb or go to an airbase where they were erasing memories of fighter pilots, he could at least listen to her now.

He put the report in a file on his computer and shut down his system for the day. He tucked Scully’s note in his pocket, locked his desk and stood up to see Spender talking at the doorway of the bullpen with Tolliver.

Maybe he could come back tonight to pick up the file from Fowley and Spender’s office under the guise of the party. At the very least, it was worth a shot.

As Mulder was leaving the bullpen, he caught the eye of Tolliver as he donned his jacket. Mulder held up seven fingers and Tolliver tapped the side of his nose.

He spent the next two hours trying to get a hold of Scully but to no avail. Mulder sat on his leather couch at home in his jeans and turtleneck, counting down the hours before the party. He tossed his basketball overhead while a black and white Christmas movie played loudly from the corner. He did a hundred and forty two push-ups. He tried to hold a wall squat but fell so loudly on the floor that his downstairs neighbour hit their ceiling with a broom.

Eventually, he left a message for Scully on her house phone and headed out to the Christmas party. The very thought of voluntarily spending time with his coworkers made his skin crawl but all he had to do was show his face, drink a spiked eggnog and sneak down to steal the file. Maybe he would steal the file beforehand and skip the party all together.

Mulder was still disappointed he had yet to repay Scully for her kindness earlier that day. As he drove to the Hoover building and his palm scratched down the five o’clock shadow that had grown, he wondered how this day had felt so long.

As he arrived at the Hoover building, he parked at his usual spot and moved quickly towards the elevator banks. He had the spare key to the basement office from Scully’s keyring. He had been awarded the coveted item the week before under the condition that he wouldn’t use it without her there.

She hung up on him over three hours ago and he had left a number of embarrassing messages. He wasn’t completely inept without her. Maybe showing up alone might dissuade rumours that could be circulating about them lately. It wouldn’t hurt.

As he reached the basement of the FBI and walked down the familiar hallway to his old office, he listened for any noise coming down the long corridor but all he could hear was the hum of the copier that had been installed after the fire.

“Here goes nothing,” he whispered to himself.

Mulder approached the door the office to find the door ajar. He knocked on the wall and opened the door a little more. The space looked like it hadn’t been touched in over two weeks since he and Scully had decorated it. The desk was no longer wrapped in paper but much of the other adornments had been left up. He could envision Spender removing what was necessary and petulantly leaving the rest. Mulder didn’t know whether to be annoyed or pleased that the files were still wrapped in the shiny red paper.

“Lazy ass little shit,” Mulder muttered as he looked around the space.

Mulder found the file on top of the pile that Diana had brought to his attention earlier that afternoon. The contact information was for a local community sheriff’s office. Mulder took the file down to the copier, duplicated what was important and set the file back on Spender’s desk.

When he arrived at the ninth floor, the Christmas music was playing loudly through the halls from the bullpen.  
  
“Holy shit, Spooky. You _actually_ showed up!” Tolliver called as he entered the bullpen. Tolliver handed him a cup of eggnog and put one hand on his slightly swaying hips. “This stuff is sharp this year.”

Mulder took a hesitant sip and he coughed immediately. His throat burned as the bourbon, rum and brandy slid down to his stomach with the sugary cream as a vehicle for the liquor. “Jesus.”

“Agent Halloren mixed it,” Tolliver said. “She’s trying to get into Spender’s tightly done up trousers.”

Mulder looked at the crowd around him. “Is Spender here?”

Spender being close by meant Diana might be here also. He didn’t want Diana to bring up the trip to him again. Ghost hunting on Christmas Eve was only exciting if he was with Scully and he had no intention of going with Diana.

“Over by the copier,” Tolliver said as he pointed towards the back end of the bullpen.

Mulder clinked his paper cup against Tolliver’s and took another hesitant sip of the boozy concoction.

“ _Shit_ ,” he muttered as he walked through the crowd with the intent of being seen by as many people as possible.

“Merry Christmas!” Agent Mendoza greeted as Mulder approached the drinks station. “Having a ‘nog?”

This was a side of the FBI he had missed out on since leaving the VCU and working in the basement. He had no idea the gatherings allowed the agents above the basement to get this unfettered.

Mulder grabbed a full carton of eggnog and poured a little into his cup to thin out the alcohol. He looked at the one litre cardboard in hand before dumping the rest into the punch bowl that had gotten everyone to loosen their ties.

“What are you doing, man?” Mendoza asked as Mulder stirred the new eggnog into the bowl. “This stuff is good! Don’t do that!”

“That stuff will set your insides on fire and get you a DUI,” Mulder advised.

“I’m cabbing it,” Mendoza stated confidently with a hiccup.

A group near them cheered as a round of shots were consumed in unison and Mulder realized things were about to get off the hinges very quickly. The Christmas music got louder and food was being placed on the cabinets at the edge of the room. He had no idea to bring something for the party and some of the food looked homemade. Not that Mulder would have made anything but he could have picked up an overpriced cheese log.

“Can you say the same for everyone?” Mulder countered.

“Christ, do you have to question everything?” Mendoza asked as he poured himself another glass. He took a sip of it and made an approving face. “Still tastes like booze.”

He looked around the party that was now becoming crowded with agents from other departments. If he stayed another ten to twenty minutes, he could say he showed his face and then head home to sulk in the quiet of his apartment.

He had a CD with a bunch of depressing Christmas songs that Frohike made him five years ago that he was planning to listen on repeat. A bottle of Jameson was waiting for him to drown his sorrows in.

Maybe the eggnog was stronger than he thought.

Mulder finished his cup and put the evidence of his attendance in the trash bin. He looked around to see the night janitor poke his head in and shake his head at the crowd. Mulder used to get that same look when the janitor woke him up in the middle of a power nap before he pulled an all-nighter researching something Scully had sworn was fake.

“Spooky, are you taking off already?” Tolliver asked as Mulder zipped up his leather jacket.

The inside pocket was slightly bulging with the photocopied file folded inside and Mulder smoothed his hands down the coat to flatten the paper. “I have an early morning squash game.”

That was bullshit talk but Tolliver didn’t need to know that.

Tolliver grinned. “You tell the lady when you have dinner that BS so you don’t have to spoon all night but good luck.”

Mulder nodded reluctantly. “Thanks.”

“Although, what I hear about Lauren,” Tolliver leaned forward. “She’s a sure thing.”

Mulder coughed. “Uh… _no_ … not her but thanks.”

Tolliver gave Mulder a slap on the back and he tipped an imaginary hat to his fellow agent before making a quick exit.

Mulder grabbed a bottle of water from the vending machine in the hall on his way to the elevator banks. He reached the parkade with a water in his system but not feeling less of a small buzz from the drink. He put the key in his door but then changed his mind to call a cab.

He reached the street just as a cab was approaching and Mulder laid his head back as he muttered his address to the driver.

“You like Elvis, sir?” the driver asked as the car pulled up to a stoplight.

Mulder sat up. “Who doesn’t?”

The cabbie pressed a button on the radio and suddenly the car was filled with the sounds of Elvis crooning over his sad Christmas.

“Fuck me,” Mulder muttered as the car began to move again.

“Excuse me sir?” the man asked.

Mulder shook his head. “This is just a little too close to home.”

“You have a lady you’re sad about?” the cabbie questioned as he looked into the rearview mirror and Mulder nodded. “You must go to her, sir.”

“What’s your name?” Mulder asked as he leaned towards the front seat.

“Harjit,” he answered. “My friends call me Harj.”

“Are you married, Harj?” Mulder asked and the cabbie nodded. “So you understand women?”

Harj shook his head. “ _No_ , sir. My wife is a mystery and a multilayered lotus flower that keeps me guessing from the dawn of every morning.”

Mulder frowned a little. “Okay, I was hoping you would have some answers for me Harj.”

The cab bumped along the road until they reached the exit to Alexandria. The cab was silent for a bit. “Well sir, I can tell you that all women want to be appreciated. They want to be touched but respected. They want to be heard but they always, always, always want to be wooed. No matter how long you have been married to them. Always.”

Mulder nodded. “So I guess if my lady friend didn’t want me to mail in a report about someone kissing her without her consent-”

“You _must_ respect her,” Harj interrupted firmly. “Men say that women don’t know what they want or that they change their minds too much. They are entitled. They are wondrous. They make our babies. They give life. They sacrifice and put themselves last. When we want a sick day, no one questions why. When women want a sick day, they have to still care for the house, the children and their spouses.”

Mulder contemplated that statement. “Okay, but isn’t that being a little whipped?”

“The whipped cream appreciates the rewards of being on top of a delicious dessert, sir,” Harj said as though it was some ancient proverb.

Mulder hoped it wasn’t. “Okay so just roll over?”

“No, you must be sure of yourself but don’t be a horse’s ass,” Harj said simply. “It’s not so hard.”

Mulder scoffed. “Says _you_.”

The cab stopped in front of Mulder’s building. As he was paying the cabbie, he spotted Scully’s car up the block. That was a good sign.

"What did I say?" the cabbie prompted him.

“I’ll be as appreciative as whipped cream,” Mulder promised Harjit.

“No ass horses,” Harj advised.

Mulder stepped out into the cold air of Alexandria. Snow began to fall around him and he looked up to the streetlight as the white flakes drifted towards his face. Maybe the snow was a good sign. Maybe this meant she wasn’t so mad.

“Mulder!” Scully called as she exited his building.

“ _I’ll have a_ bluuuuueeee _Christmas….. without_ youuuuuuu,” Mulder sang to her. He took a few wavering steps to her. “Hey, Scully.”

“Mulder?” she asked in confusion.

“ _I’ll be so_ bluuuuuuue _just thinking about you_ ,” he crooned as he walked towards her. “I had spiked eggnog.”

“ _Great_ ,” she muttered.

“ _Decoraaaaations of red on a green Christmas tree,_ ” he continued as he met her in the middle. “ _Won’t be the same dear, if you’re not here with-_ ”

Her hand covered his mouth and she pulled him by the fabric of his jacket. “Stop singing. Someone will call the police.”

“I am the police!” he said when she removed her palm.

“It’s not a blue Christmas, Mulder,” she advised him. “I’m here.”

“You’re going to be with your family on Christmas. And you didn’t call me back all day,” he pointed out petulantly as she pulled him towards her car. “Where are we going?”

“We’re going to properly spend some time by my fire,” she told him as they reached her car. “Twice, if you sober up enough.”

Mulder looked around the street to watch Harj drive past. They waved to each other happily.

“I’m up for it,” he said with a boastful smirk before he hiccuped. “Maybe you should take me for food first.”

Scully grinned at him as he climbed into the car. “I have food at my place. My mom sent me home with a plate of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.”

“Bless you, Maggie,” Mulder sighed.

Scully closed the door on him and he could see her shaking her head as she walked around the car. When he got in, Mulder picked up her hand and kissed the soft skin on the inside of her wrist that peaked through her coat sleeve and leather glove.

“I didn’t send the report to Kersh,” he said and she grinned a little. “I will keep it available until you tell me otherwise.”

Scully nodded. “Thank you.”

She checked her rearview mirror and pulled onto the street. Maybe Christmas wouldn’t be blue as he worried it would be after all. Perhaps they would have some time to ghost hunt on Christmas Eve and see her family. He at least had some hope.


	17. Snowglobes and Presents

Overexcited Christmas music filled the shopping centre where Scully had spent the last three hours trying to finish up the rest of her list. What she found instead was a large crowd and her patience wearing thin quickly.

It was as she was leaving the Nordstrom’s with only a few of the items on her list that she heard her given name being called across the crowded entryway. The blonde hair caught her eye immediately and her heart sank.

“Dana!” he called again and Scully stopped in her tracks to come face to face with a smug looking Jerrod Brinkley. “Dana, there you are!”

Why he was so happy to see her when their last meeting went less than favourable for him was beyond her.

“Hello Jerrod,” she said politely as he approached.

“I’m surprised to see you here,” he noted and she narrowed her eyes. “Oh, I meant because your mother mentioned you had a lot of family in town.”

“I do… I worked today-” she stopped herself from sharing too much. She let out a breath. “I didn’t realize you had seen my mother recently.”

Jerrod took her by the elbow and led them towards the perfume counter where there was a break in the crowd. “I’m just getting some last minute gifts for my family.”

“I see,” she said with a nod. “Well, I’d better-”

“I’m getting some things for my sisters and my mother,” he continued. “And since my mother remarried, there is a large portion of an extended family I’m buying for now.”

Scully nodded in understanding. “We did a Secret Santa among the adults but it became kind of competitive.”

“Between your brothers?” Jerrod asked with a grin. “My stepbrother and I are always trying to outdo each other for my sister’s kids.”

She found herself smiling in understanding and then stopped herself. “Jerrod-”

“I wanted to apologize for the other night at the FBI Ball,” he cut her off and she relaxed a little. “I recognize that what I did was out of line.”

That gave her some relief. She could call Mulder right now and tell him to throw out the report Kersh would no doubt be asking him for.

“With everyone around, it wasn’t exactly the ideal time-” he started and Scully held her hand up. “What?”

“Jerrod,” she said with a warning tone. “I’m _seeing_ someone. I told you a few times that I wasn’t interested-”

Jerrod smirked. “Did you?”

“Even if I wasn’t seeing someone, kissing me without permission-”

“Are you serious?” he cut her off with a shake of his head. “ _Permission_?”

This was not going how she had hoped but if she was being honest, she never hoped that she would have to have this talk with anyone.

Why was consent such a difficult issue?

She tucked her chin down and looked up at him with an expression that Mulder usually understood as ‘ _you’re in for it now._ ’ Jerrod didn’t pick up on such nuances with her.

“Did I ever tell you how I felt?” she asked him and he looked at her as though that was a foreign concept. “Or what I wanted?”

The saleswoman came towards them from behind the overlit counter. “Hello! Are we shopping for anything in particular?”

Scully looked at her with the same expression she had been giving Jerrod and the woman took the hint and walked away.

“I needed her to sell me something,” Jerrod pointed out.

“Then I’ll leave,” she offered.

She moved to pick her gloves off the counter but Jerrod placed his warm hand over hers to keep her in her place.

“ _Dana_ …” he began.

Scully pulled her hand from underneath his. “This is the kind of thing I’m talking about. You’re standing six inches too close to be appropriate. We just work together. No matter what you think I’ve insinuated to you on the phone or by agreeing to help with a blood drive-”

“And the _looks_? Dancing with me at the FBI Ball?” he provided smugly.

She sighed. “I didn’t want to be rude-”

“By all means,” he invited with an acerbic tone but a sly smile.

Scully frowned. “A woman sends signals that are subtle and some that are overt. I don’t believe I sent either.”

Jerrod rolled his eyes. “I can _tell_ when a woman wants me to make a move.”

She pulled back even further. “I don’t think you can.”

“Dana, you should admit that part of you wanted me to kiss you that night,” he said confidently. “I think you just have to ask yourself _why_ -”

“I’m seeing someone else, you idiot,” she cut him off and his jaw dropped stupidly. “But a firm no from me should have been enough! Don’t call me again. Stay away from me.”

As she stormed out of the store, she scorned herself for not filing a report against him. What so many people didn’t understand was the way the FBI looked at women who made accusations as whistleblowers among the boys club of their prestigious agents. Most women who were field agents like Dana Scully were still looked upon as though they were less than the men. They were seen to be weaker, more fragile and unable to do the job. All Jerrod would need to argue was that it was harmless flirting and Scully would have to face the reality of her gender being an apparent hindrance to her job.

That was the last thing she wanted.

It was hard enough to prove herself and garner respect from Mulder when they first began working together. She found his trust grew as time went on and he came to rely on her opinion as a scientist. In the bullpen, it didn’t matter what her credentials were or how much she validated Mulder’s work because it was all just big piles of manure.

It was one thing to feel like an outsider from the FBI while she and Mulder uncovered truths about what the government was hiding but now they didn’t have the protection of the X-Files office to hide behind. They were exposed among the other agents. She felt like a nerve under a cracked tooth and she was ready to explode. She couldn’t handle their assignment on desk duty any longer. If they didn’t get back to the basement soon, she might find herself the subject of a reprimand for punching the next person in their bullpen who asked her for directions to outer space.

When she called Mulder, their conversation was less than reassuring about her decision. As much as he wanted to help, she didn’t want him to file a complaint on her behalf. She wanted the whole thing to go away and to forget that she was the subject of such attentions. It wasn’t her dream to be so blatantly chased by a man who was akin to a fairy tale villain who only wanted a woman as an object or decoration in his life. That was not the kind of romance that appealed to Dana Scully.

At the very least by not filing her report against Brinkley, she found herself looking more and more compliant to what the FBI wanted. Anything that looked bad for the FBI was bad for everyone involved. Mulder didn’t understand the repercussions of being a woman filing a report against a man. Female recruits were told, once given assignments, not to make themselves the object of any attention unless it was for their work. It was not far fetched to think men did not receive the same speech.

He wouldn’t understand what it would do to her professionally to come forward. It had been ages since she had the task of standing up for herself in this regard because she had managed to avoid repeat encounters with men who had the same slick demeanour as Brinkley. Most of all, it left her with a shameful feeling that was mostly misplaced anger.

After hanging up on Mulder and stepping out into the street to hail her cab, her phone fell from her pocket right into a wet puddle.

She sighed, heavily. “Bah-humbug.”

She pulled the soggy electronic device from the puddle and tucked herself into a cab to go back to Georgetown. Even though she had felt like she was done with all her shopping, when she finished wrapping all the presents, she found a secondary list from Charlie and Michelle for the boys. That list was currently sitting on her dining room table.

She had heard that sitting her phone in a bag of rice might help so that was her plan for the device once she could get home. If she could catch a cab… It would be easy to head back to work, explain what just happened to Mulder and have him escort her home to make good on explicit activity.

Scully caught a cab to her apartment in Georgetown where she decided to have a bath to wash the day off of her, especially that last encounter with Jerrod.

When she arrived home, her mother had left three messages reminding her about their family supper. Her phone immediately went into a bag of uncooked rice and she spent an hour soaking away her frustrations with their current work status.

This should be bothering Mulder more. If it wasn’t, there had to be some reason why. Falling into a relationship together couldn’t be enough to placate his desires to get back to the basement.

The sex was great but Mulder wasn’t appeased by milestones that satisfied the normal man. He wasn’t career driven, focused on getting married or even concerned with having a family.

As the Epsom salts soothed her aching feet from walking around in her impossibly high heels, she had to ask herself what the end game was for her and Mulder. Everyone else in her family seemed to wonder that too.

He wasn’t the marrying kind and the harsh reality was that she wasn’t able to give him children. What did he want with her? Would this tryst they started only a few weeks ago end by New Year’s?

He said that she was his everything and he wanted her forever. She just found herself contemplating what kind of life that would be. Would that mean they were going to find themselves at the centre of a plot to uncover the existence of extraterrestrials for the rest of their lives?

The last time she was in that bath, Mulder was wrapped around her and talked about the idea of Home, Pennsylvania without the Peacocks to taint it with incest and murder. He got as far as describing a house with a wrap-around porch before she turned in his arms and they made the water slosh on the floor by agitating their bodies in unison.

Scully’s phone rang and she picked up the receiver she had placed near the tub. “Hello?”

“Dana,” her older brother’s voice came through the line.

The happy memories of riding Mulder in her tub disappeared and she sat up more rigidly in the water. “Hi, Bill.”

“Mom is getting dinner organized and I’ve been tasked with finding out if you and that sorry-son-of-a-”

“Bill,” Scully cut him off in a warning tone.

“If you and your…partner will be joining us,” he corrected.

Scully had appreciated the quiet and respite of an afternoon without Mulder. A few more hours wouldn’t hurt him.

“Just me tonight,” she answered. “And don’t ask why.”

“I don’t care to know,” he replied bitingly. “Dinner is at six.”

Scully hung up the phone and sighed. Dinner was always at six and getting information that she already had about obvious things irritated her. She wasn’t new to the idea that dinner for the Scully family was promptly at six p.m. whether Ahab was home or not. Her mother’s habit for being prompt with dinner service hadn’t changed in thirty years.

Eventually, the water grew cold and she rinsed her body off in the shower. It would be another hour before she was due at her mother’s so she took her time getting ready, picked up some wine on the way and headed out to an evening with her family.

Charlie insisted that drying out a wet cell phone in a bag of uncooked rice was a load of crap but she was determined to try. She was not interested in trying to replace the phone if it was a simple fix. Bill assured her it would work and, therefore, the family spent half the dinner checking on a bag of uncooked rice and discussing the difficulty of facing Radio Shack during the holidays.

“Where’s Fox tonight?” Maggie asked as she and her daughter washed and dried the dishes from dinner.

Michelle and Tara, who were packing up the leftovers from the dinner, stopped talking. Charlie and Bill had been assigned bath and bedtime duty for the kids. Above where the women were gathered, the sound of children squealing was more prominent than the sound of anyone being bathed. Dana could hear her eldest brother trying to wrangle his son in the water and splashing frequently, followed by some cursing. If she had the thought, it would be something to document but instead she was avoiding her brother with clean up.

“I don’t know,” Dana told her mother honestly.

Tara cleared her throat. “Everything all right?”

Dana didn’t know how much she wanted to share with her mother and her sisters-in-law about what happened at the FBI Ball and Jerrod’s recent infraction toward her at Nordstrom’s. It was embarrassing to admit what happened, even if she knew the women in her family would not judge her in the slightest.

“I...” Dana began.

“Did he do something?” Michelle asked lightly.

Dana set the last plate onto the dry pile and laid her towel down next to the stack. “I ran into an issue with someone from work-”

“What kind of issue?” Tara asked as she brought the large pot over to the sink to wash. “Who would have an issue with you?”

“What does that have to do with Fox?” Maggie asked with concern.

“Mulder wanted me to make a complaint more official,” Scully told them reluctantly. “Sexual harassment complaints can mark the person filing the complaint as well as the offender.”

Tara, Michelle and Maggie stopped their activities and stood around Dana to wait for the full explanation.

“What happened, Dana?” Maggie asked her daughter.

“You don’t mean, Mulder?” Michelle clarified.

“No, _never_ Mulder,” she denied. She shook her head and waved her hands in front of her. “He’s a gentleman…”

The Scully women looked relieved.

“Then who?” Maggie asked Dana and she gave her mother a regretful look. “Not Jerrod.”

“ _Mom_ -”

“Dana,” Maggie cut her off. “What did he do?”

Michelle and Tara looked at her with worried faces and she felt embarrassed to have to recount what happened again, this time to her family. As she tried to reconcile her feelings of guilt and frustration, she also felt angry.

“We went to the FBI ball-”

“ _Fancy_ ,” Tara cut in and Maggie gave her daughter-in-law a pointed look. “Sorry.”

“It’s a mandatory event with selected agents,” Dana explained and she ran her tongue along her upper lip nervously. “I went there, not entirely with Mulder, but we were seated together. Anyway, I don’t know why but I agreed to a dance with Jerrod… I guess in his mind that was a green light and he kissed me in front of everyone-”

“ _No_ ,” Michelle and Tara said in unison.

“I didn't want him to. I'm with Mulder... So, obviously, I was upset about it,” Scully replied. “My boss asked me if I wanted to file a harassment complaint. Mulder thinks I should but I don’t want to be thought of as some kind of snitch. It's not cut and dry.”

“Dana, you _should_ ,” Michelle insisted.

Dana shook her head and she walked across the kitchen to pick up a snow globe of Annapolis that sat along the shelf around the kitchen nook table. The small white flecks in the water fell around the miniature Naval Academy and submarine. When she looked up from the simple scene, her family was watching her intently.

“I didn’t think I would do anything about it until I ran into him this afternoon,” she replied. She set the snow globe down and twisted the item on the table. “He… he doesn’t understand that a woman might not desire his advances.”

“What happened?” Maggie asked as she sat across from her at the table.

Dana sighed. “He _thanked_ me for not filing a complaint.”

“What an ass,” Michelle muttered and glanced over to her mother-in-law. “Sorry, Mom.”

“No that’s probably the word I would have used,” Maggie assured her. “Dana… if you want to file a complaint or you don’t, that’s entirely up to you but sometimes when we don’t speak out, it creates a pattern. It perpetuates a behaviour we have to stop.”

“So what you’re saying is that I should potentially risk not getting back to an assignment and mark myself professionally to prevent someone like Jerrod Brinkley from harassing more women? That somehow I’m complicit in future potential harassments?” Dana summarized and her mother nodded. “Being a woman in the FBI is hard enough-”

“Dana, it’s not easy to be a woman anywhere,” Tara interjected. “Sometimes I think parents look at me like a babysitter instead of an educator whereas my male colleagues get respect.”

“For the first year working together, people thought I was Mulder’s secretary,” Scully agreed. “I still get that from people sometimes. If I speak up, it could ruin our chances to get back to working on the X-Files and I couldn’t do that to Mulder.”

Maggie moved closer to Dana as she gave her daughter an understanding nod. “Dana, do you remember the year we moved back to San Diego?”  
  
Michelle and Tara sat at the table with them and gave each other knowing looks.

“What about it?” Dana asked.

“Your father was up for a promotion to move back stateside,” Maggie reminded her daughter as she picked up the snow globe from the table. “Prior to our move back to the states when your father’s promotion was still pending, a man in the staffing office came by with some papers. Your father was out at sea, Melissa and Bill were at school and I was alone with you and Charlie in the house.”

Dana’s eyes widened as she recalled the incident. She remembered hearing her mother asking a man to leave their small kitchen as she and her brother played in the living room. When Dana walked into the space, Maggie’s shirt was torn on the sleeve.

“He-”

“He made more than a pass at me and when I kindly but politely refused his advances, he threatened your father’s career,” Maggie told her calmly. “Extortion of any kind is illegal and I was lucky enough that his superior officer believed me. Once I came forward, a number of other women came forward also. It was never publicized and the man was dishonourably discharged but I put an end to what he was doing because my rights were not going to come before a job. I had sacrificed enough, Dana. And you have too.”

A sinking feeling took over her and she knew that even though it was the difficult thing to do, it also was the right thing to do.

She nodded. “What about his life? His career? I’m not just thinking of this man in Japan but Jerrod. I don't feel sorry for him but...”

“If he cared so much about his future, he might think of something other than his penis,” Tara muttered and Michelle laughed. “It’s _true_.”

“I’ve been around Mulder so long that when I’m faced with blatant misogyny towards me, I find that I’m often shocked at the level of ignorance among men,” Dana said. “Men in law enforcement that don’t see me as a real doctor or respect my opinions on a case because of my gender. Mulder has never made me feel that my opinions were less valid because I was a woman. My gender never seemed to effect him. He always listened to me as though I was his equal.”

“Amazing how respect can garner feelings of love,” Tara said with a look that said a lot more about her relationship with Bill than anything else she had confessed to Dana over the years. “When you feel disrespected, it hurts. Disrespect comes in many forms Dana but it sounds like what this Jerrod character did was just blatant disrespect.”

“You should teach the next sexual harassment seminar at the FBI,” Dana replied with a shake of her head. “I overheard two male agents say that I looked like I was _asking_ for it from Mulder because I wore a skirt to the office.”

Tara and Maggie made disgusted noises with their mouths.

“Did you report them?” Michelle asked.

“No,” Scully answered with a sigh. “Mulder overheard them too and said something that got them spooked. He never told me what it was.”

Charlie came into the kitchen just then with his eldest son over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “I came in search of brownies.”

“They’re not getting any more sweets, Charles Andrew Scully,” Michelle said sternly. “You turn _right_ around.”

“I got three names that time,” Charlie replied as he turned in the kitchen. “Sorry, bud.”

“I told you it wouldn't work. Mom is the boss,” Aiden said wisely. “Nice try though, Dad.”

Charlie nodded. “You betcha she’s the boss but I’m the co-boss.”

“You wish!” Aiden laughed as Charlie walked them through the door.

When the door closed on the kitchen, Dana looked at Michelle.

“Your boys won’t grow up thinking they can kiss women without provocation,” Dana told her. “I’m sure he thought what he was doing was entirely romantic.”

“Dana, when that man came to the house in Nakano, I often thought to myself that maybe in the past I had given him some kind of sign that I was interested-”

Dana furrowed her brow. “Mom, you’re not-”

“But then I came to realize that men who make moves on women like that aren’t looking for clear signs. They are making them up as they go along and brush off every rebuke of their advances as bad luck and any woman who doesn’t as a sign they’re still a god of sex and women,” Maggie replied with a frankness Dana hadn’t heard from her mother in a long time. “I don’t blame myself for what he did. You shouldn’t blame yourself or excuse him. He was wrong.”

“I told him a few times I was seeing someone,” she replied and sighed. “I just don’t want to ruin a man’s career over this but I think I will have to send in my report.”

Maggie patted her daughter’s hand and squeezed her fingers. “Good. I’m glad that’s settled.”

Dana looked at her watch. “I really should get going. If I need to get a new phone, I’d rather get one in the morning before the shops get too busy.”

“Take a plate to Fox,” Maggie insisted as Dana stood up. “Send him our best.”

“He is one of the good ones,” Michelle noted. “That top one has a whole meal in it ready for you.”

Dana smiled as she picked up a container of food. “He is, that.”

After kissing her nephews goodbye and having a small laugh at Bill’s soaked expense from Matthew’s bath, Dana Scully left her family in search of one Fox Mulder.

Her first stop was to check in at her apartment for messages from Mulder and put the roast and potatoes in the fridge for him. There were three messages on her home phone from Mulder asking her to call him back but when she dialled his cell phone, there was no answer.

As she drove over to Mulder’s apartment with a giant ziplock bag of rice holding her cell phone, she hoped to find him there. If he wasn’t, maybe she could at least find a clue as to where he was.

When she walked through his apartment, there was a message blinking on his answering machine and a slight mess of clothes around his bedroom. He had been here since the afternoon but clearly, he was out for the night. She contemplated calling the Gunmen but she used Mulder’s home phone to call his cell phone instead.

After his phone rang a few times, she hung up and left a note on his desk before heading out. Whatever he decided to do while she was out with her family, waiting at his place wasn’t ideal. She could wait for him at home.

She was exiting his building when she spotted a cab pulling out front. “Mulder!”

“ _I’ll have a_ bluuuuueeee _Christmas….. without_ youuuuuuu,” Mulder sang to her. He took a few wavering steps to her. “Hey, Scully.”

He was swaying slightly and singing Elvis loudly. Wherever he had been, there was alcohol involved. He was clearly inebriated.

“Mulder?”

“ _I’ll be so_ bluuuuuuue _just thinking about you_ ,” he crooned as he walked towards her. “I had spiked eggnog.”

“ _Great_ ,” she muttered.

“ _Decoraaaaations of red on a green Christmas tree_ ,” he continued as he met her in the middle. “ _Won’t be the same dear, if you’re not here with_ -”

Her hand covered his mouth and she pulled him by the fabric of his jacket. “ _Stop_ singing. Someone will call the police.”

“I _am_ the police!” he said when she removed her palm.

Sure technically he was but he could still get slapped with a citation for being drunk and disorderly. She looked up at his eyes and he seemed forlorn and sorry for himself. She certainly hoped he wasn’t drinking because they hadn’t spoken to each other all day.

“It’s not a blue Christmas, Mulder,” she reminded him. “I’m here.”

“You’re going to be with your family on Christmas. And you didn’t call me back all day,” he pointed out petulantly.

Clearly, she needed to get him back to her place and sober him up a bit. As she pulled him towards her car, he asked dumbly. “Where are we going?”

She had plans for this man and his appendages if he could sober up enough to get the hint of what she wanted. The look on his face told her she would need to spell it out to him.

“We’re going to properly spend some time by my fire,” she told him as they reached her car. “Twice, if you sober up enough.”

Mulder looked around the street to watch his cabbie drive past. They waved to each other happily and Scully wondered what exchange took place in the cab that he had a slightly different tune from that afternoon.

“I’m up for it,” he said with a boastful smirk before he hiccuped. “Maybe you should take me for food first.”

She grinned at him as he climbed into the car. “I have food at my place. My mom sent me home with a plate of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.”

“Bless you, Maggie,” Mulder sighed as he examined the bag of rice holding her cell phone.

Scully closed the door on him and shook her head as she walked around the car. When he got in, Mulder picked up her hand and kissed the sensitive skin on the inside of her wrist that peaked through her coat sleeve and leather glove.

“I didn’t send the report to Kersh,” he said and she grinned a little. “I will keep it available until you tell me otherwise.”

Scully nodded but she was sure now she should file her complaint against Brinkley. At least he supported her decision. “Thank you.”

She checked her rearview mirror and pulled onto the street. “You know Mulder…”

“Hmm?”

“I think you were right about Jerrod,” she began as she made her way out of Alexandria.

“Did something happen since I saw you last or did you just change your mind about how a sleaze like Brinkley should be handled?” Mulder quipped.

Scully sighed. “I realized that I should do my best to speak up so I don’t create a system of silence among the women I work with. If I do anything to stop him from harassing another woman - even if it marks my file too - I’ve done a good thing.”

Mulder reached for her hand again and squeezed it. “You’re not going alone on this, you know. I’ll be your back up.”

“I know,” she replied heavily.

As they neared her Georgetown apartment, she tried to remember her motivation in wanting to see Mulder again. He was a good man. He was kind, caring and tender. He never crossed a line without prompting and he made her feel valued as a partner. He respected her mind and since crossing the line from partners to lovers, she felt he truly worshipped her body. It was an ideal situation if you didn’t count the global conspiracy they were currently working to uncover while trying to get back to an assignment anyone else would be happy to be rid of.

“I can feel you thinking,” he said as she turned onto her street corner.

She smiled as she pulled into a spot outside her apartment building. “I was thinking about how our lives have changed since we started working together.”

“Uh oh,” he commented.

“I don’t mean it that way…” she said with a shake of her head. “I just mean… Even after all we’ve been through, I wouldn’t change a day.”

Mulder was holding the bag of rice in his hands and looked at her. “I would change everything you had to endure because of me and this quest.”

Selfless to the end, Mulder was the kind of man who wanted to save Scully from all she had lost over the years. He was stubborn to his own fault and often his detriment. It was easy enough to see the faults in another person when they drove you crazy. As much as he could see the problems with humanity, he still strived to save it.

“Mulder, what if what happened to us was so we could find each other as we did?” she proposed.

He sighed. “I think I would be arguing with someone more stubborn if you hadn’t seen all the things you went through but that doesn’t make it any better. You’re exasperating but now it turns me on instead of just frustrating the crap out of me.”

Scully turned off the car. “I think it still exasperates you.”

He looked down at the bag of rice in his hands again. “Scully, what the hell is this?”

She grinned at him. “My phone fell into some sidewalk slush after I got off the phone with you-”

“That’s why you didn’t answer my calls all afternoon?” he clarified and she nodded. “I thought you were mad at me.”

“No, I’m not… Anyway, so far nothing has really done much for it,” she said. “I might have to venture out in the morning to Radio Shack.”

He made a face. “Three days before Christmas? Good _luck_.”

She raised her eyebrow at him and got out of the car. When she arrived at her door, he was on her heels with the bag of rice in his hands.

“I could go for you and exchange your phone,” Mulder offered as they approached her apartment door.

“Why would you do that?” she asked.

“Maybe I’m trying to butter you up for something else,” he commented lightly. She shook her head at him about an offhand comment to a certain sexual act he wanted to try that she had shot down immediately. “Not _that_. I mean, I have some holiday plans of my own that maybe I would rather you be more inclined to take part in.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he offered. “I’ll go after breakfast.”

They approached her door and she felt suspicious of what he could possibly want her to do but agreed to let him help her anyway.

Inside Scully’s apartment, Mulder got to work building a fire while she reheated the family supper he missed out on. She opened a bottle of wine for her to taste and found a beer for Mulder in the door. With the sound of Bing Crosby singing classic Christmas music filling the space and Mulder’s muscular but lean frame stretched out on the couch, she thought to herself it wasn’t so bad to have a boyfriend like him over the holidays.

Mulder sipped his beer through his dinner and Scully stretched her legs out as she finished her second glass of wine. When he returned from washing his plate in the kitchen, he knelt in front of her and put his face in her lap.

“Good?” she asked rhetorically.

“It’s amazing that a reheated plate of roast beef can make a man feel less useless and more ready for a promise of twice on a living room floor,” he said as his hands crept up her legs to the waist band of her trousers. “Unless that offer no longer stands.”

Scully grinned at him and pulled her sweater over her head to toss it to the other end of the couch. “It does.”

Mulder pulled his turtleneck over his head and reached for her but she pushed his hands down on the couch. “I want to-”

“Mulder…” Scully began as she knelt in front of him and licked her upper lip. “Let me.”

His eyes widened and a grin crept up his mouth as she reached for his belt buckle. “Uh, well… I mean you already did that today... and I wouldn’t want to refuse such kindness again but-”

“Just… just let me,” she cut him off.

If she was to use her FBI training, she could sense a pattern in Mulder or detect a behavioural preference that he was happier ‘giving’ than ‘receiving’ when it came to oral pleasure. There was definitely a misplaced guilt that he had over being on the receiving end of such affections. She assumed it had to do with needing to be in control but also that he enjoyed watching what he could do to a woman. Mulder’s affinity towards porn revealed that nugget of information pretty easily.

She pulled the leather strap of Mulder’s belt past the metal latch, grinning at him as her nimble fingers took the button through the hole and unzipped his jeans.

“Uh…” he started and let out a huff of air as she found his hardened flesh inside his boxer shorts.

Scully took his member out and watched as it stood straight up when she released it. “You were saying?”

It was flattering and impressive how quickly and efficiently he could become aroused from something as simple as kneeling in front of him.

“I…” he started as his eyes showed his own astonishment at himself. “I guess I’m not as drunk as I thought.”

The comment would have been believable if he hadn’t hiccuped immediately afterwards. They grinned at one another for a beat until Scully leaned across his lap and kissed his mouth. As he was putting his hand in her hair and she felt the tip of his dick brush against her breasts, she pulled back.

“No distracting,” she said with mock authority.

Mulder’s kisses were anything if not distracting and he knew. Mulder’s mouth had skills unmatched to any man she had ever been with. His kisses aroused her and brought her to utmost pleasures against her sex.

This was her turn to show him. It was his turn to feel how much she loved and appreciated him. He was deserving of every gesture of love he expressed to her.

Scully stroked his shaft once and noted a drop of pre-ejaculate from the tip. She rubbed the pad of her thumb across the liquid and Mulder let out a shuddering breath. She held his gaze as she lowered her mouth and took the tip of his cock into her.

“ _Fuuuuuuuuck_ ,” he dragged out as her lips released the tip. “Scully-”

She was done debating whether she should anymore. This was something she wanted. Maybe the desire to do this wasn’t as strong in Scully as it was for Mulder to perform this act on her but she certainly had thought about this very act once or twice over the years.

She definitely felt in control as she slid her lips halfway down his shaft and swirled her tongue around the tip. He let out a choked sound as she flattened her tongue to take him deeper down to her throat.

“Fuck,” he replied quickly as her mouth moved further.

She hollowed out her cheeks and began to suck strongly. She swallowed once and he cursed again. Mulder’s trimmed fingernails scratched as he gripped the cushions. It was clear he was fighting every urge to touch her head and, while she usually found a light hand on her head endearing, she didn’t want him to stop her at any point.

Mulder was panting as she drew a line up his shaft with her tongue and circled the head three times. Her tongue paid special attention to the line of flesh that separated the tip and the rest of his member. Just like the spot behind Scully’s clit, this spot on Mulder was particularly sensitive. It wasn’t her goal to make him come right away. Like he had done for her in the past, it wasn’t about getting her there quickly. It was about making her appreciate the experience and bringing him to a state of euphoria with her mouth.

It was a powerful emotion but mostly, it was arousing. She could feel her own sex throbbing as she moved his shaft in her mouth and pressed her thighs together to ease the ache inside. It wasn’t enough.

Her hand wrapped around the base of his shaft while she moved her other hand between her legs, pressing her thumb along the seam of her pants until the urge to touch herself became overwhelming.

“This is so unfair,” he moaned as she hummed in appreciation while her thumb pressed harder against her sex. “And before you stop and ask what, it’s that I can hear you touching yourself but I can’t see it.”

She didn’t know if that meant stop so she kept going. It was just as she was at the tip of his cock with her lips when he grabbed her by her upper arms. With force she had only seen used on a suspect, Mulder had her on her back on the couch and was grabbing at the waist of her pants.

“ _Mulder_!” she cried out as his thick fingers released the button on her pants and pull them down her hips quickly. “I was-”

“You’re too good at that, Scully,” he said almost angrily. “And then for me to hear you touching yourself… _No_.”

His hands made quick work of her nylons and he pulled her roughly by the back of her knees down the couch towards him.

“I have to taste how wet you got,” he said as he pulled her panties down her thighs. He looked from her sex and then up to her face with astonishment. “This was just from doing things to me?”

She nodded silently and Mulder ran a hand across his mouth.

“What?” she questioned.

“You’re making it impossible not to fuck you right now,” he told her as though they were arguing theories. He pressed his face against the apex of her thighs and placed a kiss on her mound. “I really… I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”

She felt her cheeks flush at his words. “I have an idea.”

Mulder pulled her to stand up so that her face was in line with her breasts to remove her bra. He was shirtless with his pants open and his chest muscles caught the light of the fire as he pulled her to his lap. She wanted nothing else between them, just the feeling of his warm skin against hers.

She wanted him underneath her body, between her thighs and his beautifully rigid cock inside of her. The other part of her wanted him on top, covering her with his weight and feeling the blanket of the fire on her skin. It was a tough call.

Mulder’s right hand moved from her backside and his thumb pushed up inside her aching sex. “You’re so wet, Scully.”

She nodded with a whimper as she bit her lip, her hands holding on to his shoulders while he pushed his thumb further up inside her tight walls. “Yes.”

He turned them on his knees and set her down carefully on the blanket laid out over top of the carpet by the fireplace. He made her feel safe and protected while she was full of dangerous urges and desires. It was a perfect contradiction as she was so exposed but felt the most protected.

Mulder stood slowly and looked down at her as he pulled his jeans and underwear the rest of the way off his long legs. Scully arched her back and discarded her bra. There was nothing left physically between them as he lowered his body and covered hers. Between the heat from the fire, the warmth of his body and her own arousal, she was at a place of contentment.

He pulled his hips back slightly and aligned their sexes. Mulder looked up from where he was about to enter her and into her eyes. The lust and yearning desires were mixed with love and admiration.

He moved in closer and entered her at last. It took only a few pushes but he stretched and filled her at last. It hadn’t been long since their last coupling but it still hurt a little just the same.

“Oh,” she breathed as he filled her. His hips shifted and she felt him slide in a little more. “Oh.”

“My sentiments exactly,” he said as his lips brushed against her mouth.

Mulder kissed her long and lazily as her sex adjusted to the invasion of his body inside of her. If it was possible, he stretched her even more and without breaking the kiss, he pumped his hips once.

He kept his tongue sliding against hers as he leaned his elbows on either side of her head and his hips began a quick and sharp rhythm. This was him fucking her at his pace, with her body pinned beneath his and his cock stretching her in all the right ways. He wouldn’t keep this up for long because he liked to prolong her experience and make her come every way he could. He was just regaining some of the control she had when he was in her mouth.

Scully gripped on to his biceps as he moved in and out. Before she could get used to his jarring thrusts, he was pulling his body up so he was no longer pressing her into the blankets below them. She missed his warmth but he had other plans for her. He took the backs of her legs in hand and spread her open, pulling her ass up in the air while he quickened his rhythm.

“Touch yourself,” he told her and she obeyed only for the reason that she ached and wanted to find a release.

He looked down and her eyes watched his grow wild as his cock pushed down into her pelvis. Each pass of her finger brushed against his shaft and the essence of her arousal coating her fingers to slide against her clit with ease.

Scully let out a mix of a whimper and a groan, a guttural sound coming from the back of her throat as she felt her sex tighten. Mulder slid in and out of her more easily with her pussy getting wetter and wetter.

“Fuck,” Mulder growled as he moved his body so that she was bent in half and his face was close to hers. “Don’t stop, you feel so good.”

“Isn’t that my line?” she teased and he punctuated each word with a hard thrust of his hips.

“Ugh, Scully,” he groaned as he slammed harder against her. “Your tight pussy feels so good.”

Her eyes widened but her sex ached at his words. She didn’t want to stop and she didn’t want him to be quiet. She liked the way he whispered her name. She liked thinking about how he could take her body and make it his yet he was completely hers.

She was under the control of his strong hands now but if she asked him to, he would gladly lay down for her if she needed to be on top. It was a true partnership of love and respect. He could take her on the floor of her living room and she could look him in the eyes later and see only admiration.

Her heart swelled at his love for her and she knew her orgasm was close. She spread her arousal harder and faster across her clit while Mulder continued to pump. It was a surprise that her orgasm started to wash over her and she called out his name.

“Oh! Mulder!” she yelled to the ceiling and he pumped faster as she felt her walls milk his shaft.

He felt like wrought iron inside her belly and he was pummeling inside her with force she wasn’t used to. Mulder watched her intently as she opened her mouth to a silent cry of pleasure and rapture.

It was minutes later she felt a kiss on her cheek and realized she might have blacked out.

“You okay?” Mulder asked with serious concern. He was sitting back on his haunches with pink cheeks and his erection pointing at her. “You went limp and I thought I might need to call an ambulance.”

She shook her head. “No, I’m fine. I promise.”

“What’s my name?” he asked her carefully.

“The name you go by or the one I’m not supposed to call you?” she quipped.

Mulder nodded once. “You’re fine.”

She almost laughed until he pulled on her legs and flipped her on her belly so she was facing her Christmas tree. He pulled her hips up and she moved up onto her hands to look over her shoulder at him.

“What-” she started but he pushed inside her before she could finish her question.

“You know what I’m doing,” he growled.

He started a hard and fast rhythm that was purely for him to come. There would be no long, drawn out orgasms or tender touches. His one hand took her hip while the other palmed her breast and squeezed with every hard thrust.

It would be hard to deny she wasn’t getting close to another orgasm from the control he had over her body and the angle at which the head of his cock was pushing into her.

The sound of his lap slapping into her ass and her short breaths filled the room. She felt like he was on the verge and she held the carpet and blankets in her hands tightly for dear life. This was nothing like the force from a building blowing up behind her but it was close.

Mulder leaned closer to her back and he bit the skin along her shoulders. She was being marked by him everywhere and she didn’t mind it.

With one last thrust, he came inside of her and she felt the familiar warm trembling of his member.

“Scu-huh-” he attempted but he was too spent.

Mulder slowly removed the hand from her breast to lean on the floor while he kissed her back and continued to shudder inside of her.

“I got carried away,” he noted but she wouldn’t deny she minded it.

“I liked it,” she confessed after a beat as she looked over to her tree where the angels and reindeer ornaments swung slightly from the activity a few feet away.

“I do love you, Dana Scully,” Mulder said into the hot skin on her back.

She revelled in the way he could transfer his fire and passion to her. She no longer felt cold and rigid as she had standing at the department store counter with Jerrod Brinkley.

“I love you back, Fox Mulder,” she replied as she looked over her shoulder to him.

“Is it cliche to sleep in front of the fireplace?” he asked her as he pulled out carefully. “I’ll get a tissue.”

Scully laid on her side as she waited and realized as cliche as it would be, it wouldn’t be the most comfortable. When he returned with water and a Kleenex box, she gave him a regretful look.

“I think we’ll have to bunk in the bedroom,” she said as she wiped away the evidence of their joining.

“Well, then.” Mulder held his hand out to her. “Shall we?”

 


	18. Peppermint and Wreaths

After writing and emailing her report to Kersh’s assistant, Dana Scully had to brave the morning at the closest electronics store in Georgetown to fix her cell phone. Being off work for the holiday was nice but this was not how she wanted to spend her morning. Radio Shack on a midweek morning before Christmas was not a version of hell she wanted to repeat ever again.

Mulder had gallantly offered to go with her, however as they were readying themselves to leave for the mall, he got a call from the Lone Gunmen. He left her standing by her car with her keys in hand and a confused look on her face without much of a second thought.

It took her a few minutes to try to understand what had just happened but she had to shrug it off. Mulder wasn’t going to be the kind of man who accompanied her on silly errands or even did them for her when there was something more enticing from the Lone Gunmen waiting for him.

When she left the mall with her new phone activated, she left to meet her family for a late lunch. It would be a first for the Scully family that week to dine out at a place as an extended group. Someone picked Mamma Lucia’s in an attempt for the kids to be happy while the adults sat around talking. The ultimate goal was to give Maggie a break from the kitchen.

Mulder had taken Scully there once after a case and she remembered that she liked the variety as well. The Scully clan with strollers, high chairs, car seats and coats took up the entire back room.

“Mom, are there more than the ten of us?” Dana asked as she sat on the chair across from Maggie. “This seems like a lot.”

“Father McCue is coming by,” Maggie said lightly. “I think Helen and Tom Bennett will be stopping by as well-”

“Mom, _please_ don’t tell me Jerrod is coming,” Dana groaned. “I really don’t want to see him after what happened and it’s going to be awkward if I have to explain to him in person that I am filing the harassment report.”

“Dana, of course not,” Maggie assured her with a pat on her daughters hand. She cleared her throat and glanced towards Michelle. “Tom and Helen are friends and I thought Fox was joining us.”

Dana shrugged. “I don’t know. He had something come up.”

“So Mr. Perfect isn’t actually perfect,” Bill muttered as he sat down next to his younger sister.

“Bill,” Maggie began with a kind yet warning tone.

Bill held up his hands and smiled tightly at his sister. “Sorry. That’s the last time I make a comment.”

Dana put her hand on her brother’s back and smiled tightly. “I know it won’t be but I appreciate the offer.”

Bill looked over at his wife Tara over Matthew’s head in the high chair and shrugged. “I tried.”

“Why don’t you switch seats with me and then you and your brother can talk shop or about sports,” Tara offered patiently.

Michelle slid into the booth next to Maggie with Charlie next to her and their boys at the end of the table. “Oh my god, this place smells like heaven.”

“It smells like parmesan cheese and baking bread,” Scully noted.

“That’s what my version of heaven smells like,” Michelle replied seriously and they all laughed.

Helen and Tom Bennett arrived at the restaurant just then with Father McCue. Scully’s felt her stomach drop when Jerrod came into view behind them. This couldn’t possibly be happening. Why would he be there?

Maggie gave her daughter an apologetic look and shook her head. When Scully made a move to grab her gloves, Maggie put her hand over hers. “Don’t.”

“This is ridiculous,” Dana muttered. “I can’t be here. I called him an idiot. I told him to stay away from me.”

Michelle scoffed. “You called him an idiot?”

Her cheeks pinked further but it was out of anger. “I couldn’t call him a misogynistic pig in the middle of Nordstroms.”

“You definitely could,” Maggie assured her and Tara and Michelle laughed.

“Hello!” Helen greeted as she walked in with Tom and Father McCue. “Maggie, how are you?”

Dana crossed her arms over her chest as the feeling of anger came back. What the hell was this family doing? Why would her mother put her in this scenario after all of this?

“Dana,” a voice called to her and she looked over her shoulder at a remorseful looking Jerrod Brinkley. “Can I have a minute?”

This wasn’t a good idea. This was actually the opposite of a good idea and the only result was for her to leave. Scully gathered her coat and gloves to stand up.

“Dana,” Jerrod repeated. “I need to apologize.”

Slowly, she turned to face him to see a look of regret in his eyes. It wasn’t enough. He kissed her and when she told him she wasn’t interested, he scoffed at the notion of his affections being unrequited.

“Oh,” she began. “Um…”

He held his hand out for them to exit the back room. “Please.”

Scully glanced over her shoulder to her sisters-in-law who were glaring at Jerrod. She looked to her mother who was watching her daughter closely.

“Dana,” Bill started.

Scully realized then that the pillow talk her brothers shared with their wives included the details of her run-in with Jerrod Brinkley. Jerrod’s face turned white as Bill stood up from the table.

“I’ll be fine,” Scully reassured her brother.

Jerrod held out his hand and Scully gave him a warning look. He put his hands up defensively and Helen cleared her throat. This was awkward, unbearable and humiliating.

Dana Scully would not be made a victim or a spectacle of by this man. The last thing she wanted was a scene but she didn’t know what to do except go with him.

They took a table by the window and Scully folded her arms as she sat rigidly across from him.

“Dana,” Jerrod began and she could smell the peppermint on his breath. “I want to apologize.”

Scully settled her gaze on him with solidified coolness. “Really.”

He ran a hand through his blonde locks and gave her an apologetic smile. “Really.”

“You shouldn’t be smiling,” she warned him and his face fell. “I’ve filed a complaint. Meeting with you like this is very ill-advised.”

“I’ve had a long discussion with my mother and my sisters,” Jerrod said. “I realize that women are people-”

“You just realized now that your mother, sister and nieces are people?” she interjected sharply.

“I mean women are people that deserve respect,” he attempted to continue.

Scully shook her head. “That’s not much better.”

“Dana it’s 1999. Women have made huge leaps in the last ten years with equal pay. Not to mention, you can’t go five minutes without someone bringing up issues of sexual harassment-”

“Obviously, not enough,” she stopped him. “Equal pay aside, your attitude leaves a lot left to be desired. The fact that you’re one of many men I’ve encountered in the FBI that behaves this way-”

“Like your partner,” he cut her off.

“Mulder isn’t anything like you,” she fumed and she could feel herself begin to lose her temper. “He’s a gentleman.”

“Same kind of gentleman that gave you that hickey?” Jerrod scoffed.

Scully put her hand on her neck. She had checked herself this morning and was sure she was fine. Her anger only bubbled closer to the surface when Jerrod laughed. “What’s funny?”

“I thought maybe you might be giving it up to him and that’s why-”

“Are you trying to insinuate because I’m involved in a sexual relationship with another man that you can insult me?” she challenged him. “I hope that’s not what you’re insinuating because if it is any form of scarlet letter branding-”

“You called yourself a slut, I didn’t,” he asserted haughtily.

“If I was sleeping with a hundred men and not you, it would still be only my business,” Scully avowed as she stood up. “The fact that I’m not interested in your advances and you’re not respecting that is the very reason that you deserve the complaint in your file against you.”

“Did someone put you up to that?” he asked worriedly as he stood up also. “Dana-”

“Jerrod,” she cut him off. “You don’t seem to get it.”

“I apologized,” he insisted with his hands outstretched to her. "What else do you want?"

“You just insinuated I was a slut for having sex,” she pointed out.

He sat down at the table and put his head in his hands. “I can’t believe this. My career is going to be over. I came here because I told my mother I was going to apologize. She pointed out to me how much I had missed the mark. I honestly didn’t get it.”

Scully sat down across from him as she began to feel an inkling of guilt for her complaining about him. That was the response he wanted out of her - make her feel sorry for him and possibly take back her complaint. She couldn’t do that.

“Hi folks!” a perky waitress approached. “Can I get you some coffee or tea or anything from the bar?”

“I’ll have a coffee,” Scully replied. “You can put it on the tab in the back room.”

“I’ll have a coffee also,” Jerrod requested as he lifted his head from his hands. “With cream.”

“I’ll be right back,” the waitress replied and left their table.

Scully looked at him. “If I wasn’t dating someone and I said I wasn’t interested, would you have listened?”

“Did you tell me outright you were seeing someone?” he countered.

She could feel some anger bubbling up inside of her. “I think I told you a flat out _no_ during the blood drive.”

The waitress returned with their coffee in saucers and set the cream next to Scully’s mug. She gave the young woman a tight smile and the young woman took the hint to give them some space.

Scully poured a dollop of cream into her mug and stirred the liquid around with her small spoon. “Are you trying to remember what I told you?”

“I _am_ ,” he confessed and looked around the table. “She didn’t bring the cream.”

“There’s-”

Jerrod stood up and walked around the restaurant. Mortified at what she was seeing, he headed towards the counter and walked behind it. “I asked for cream!”

Scully stood up and walked towards the counter as the servers around him looked at him in shock. “Jerrod!”

“I _asked_ for cream!” he called to another waitress. “Where is it?”

“I’ll get it for you,” she offered.

“Why can’t I get any service?” he asked with his hands up in the air.

“It’s on our table,” Scully called to him in a panic as she hurried behind the counter to grab his arm. “It’s on our table, stop it.”

“It’s not. Where’s my cream?” he called to the service staff on shift. 

The employees around him watched in shock as Jerrod stormed around. This could not be happening.

Jerrod scowled at their waitress as Scully pulled him out from behind the counter and towards their table.

“What?”

“ _What_?” she asked him in disbelief.

He grinned at her. “You’re kind of adorable when you get mad.”

“I’m sorry,” she said to their waitress and shook her head at Jerrod. “You need to apologize.”

Tom and Helen had emerged from the back room with Maggie and Bill. Most of the patrons in the restaurant were now watching the spectacle of Scully, Jerrod and the waitress. This couldn’t be more humiliating than if she and Mulder got into an argument in front of Diana.

“I should get an apology for having to get up,” he protested as she pulled him closer to the table.

“ _Stop_ talking,” she instructed as she turned around to him.

“You have a little crinkle in the middle of your eyebrows,” Jerrod noted as he reached out to run the tip of his finger along it.

Scully stepped back from him and around the restaurant in disbelief. That was when she saw Mulder standing in the doorway watching them with a look of panic on his face.

“Mulder-” she started.

“Nice,” he scoffed and walked out the door.

_How was this happening?_

“Dana, don’t-” Jerrod started as he held her elbow.

Scully pulled his hand from her arm. “Could you _stop_?”

Jerrod rolled his eyes at her and Scully shook her head to walk out of the restaurant after Mulder. When she got out to the street, he was rounding the corner.

“Mulder!” she called to him.

She continued down the street and caught up with him at his car.

“Scully, _don’t_ start with me,” he warned her as he rounded the car to the driver’s side.

“Start what?” she asked. “What would I start? I didn’t do-”

“Right, you didn’t _do_ anything and you’re just in a _weird_ embrace with the California dreamboat with your family watching-”

“That’s not what happened!” she cut him off.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve yelling at me when you’re the one who’s wrong here,” he replied gravely. “A lot of nerve.”

“Would you just come back in and let me explain?” she pleaded as she took a step towards him.

Mulder held his hand up, stopping her in her tracks. “Don’t. There shouldn’t be anything to explain. That’s what’s frustrating.”

“ _Mulder_ ,” she protested. “You’re being-”

“Jealous? Hurt? Angry? I’m entitled to feel that way when I walked in to see you and that asshat holding each other,” he snapped at her and opened his car door. “You’d feel the same way if the situation was reversed and you _know_ _it_ so don’t bullshit me with some excuse again. I’ll see you.”

Before she could say anything else, Mulder drove off and away from her. She was left on the street with more embarrassment and shame than she was prepared for that day. Her belongings were in the restaurant, she had to go back in there. She didn’t have her wallet or her purse. She shivered on the street as the frustration and adrenaline left her body.

It had been a long time since she had been yelled at in such a fashion. Scully wasn’t used to that kind of anger coming from Mulder and it jarred her.

“Dana?” a voice called.

She closed her eyes and frowned. “Mom-”

“Is Fox okay?” she asked worriedly as she put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders.

“He left,” Scully answered as though that was enough of an answer. Slowly she looked at her mother and she saw that Maggie mother understood. “This is the most embarrassed-”

“Well, Helen and Tom asked Jerrod to leave. They want to apologize for what happened,” her mother told her. “When you’re ready.”

Scully sighed. “Might as well do it now.”

“There’s no rush,” Maggie informed her.

She looked around the street and noticed a woman watching her closely. “We made a scene out here. I would rather go back in to the restaurant.”

Maggie took her daughter’s hand and gave it a squeeze as they readied themselves to walk back to Mamma Lucia’s.

 

***** *****

 

There were no messages on her phone when she arrived home that night. Her cell phone hadn’t rang all afternoon with her family. She expected to hear from Mulder at least once after he had cooled down. Instead, her landline, cell phone and email were all quiet.

“Great,” she muttered.

Scully hung her jacket and stepped out of her heels to carry them to her closet. When she made it back to her bedroom, the emptiness of her apartment made a pit form in her stomach.

Mulder should be there, laying on her bed in his boxers with the sports section in his hands. She missed him and as much as she didn’t want to admit it, she was lonely without him.

Scully wasn’t used to this kind of loneliness. She had chosen a life of solitude before Mulder because it was safer and easier. Her line of work, the hours, the danger and her feelings for Mulder constantly got in the way. She knew going outside her comfort zone to search for romance or friendship would only end in disappointment and heartache.

What if Mulder was contemplating ending things because of another misunderstanding with Jerrod?

She could soldier on, attempt to work through that pain and try to be his friend and partner again. There was no ‘just’ with Mulder because his presence in her life took up so much space but it worried her to think how difficult it would be to try to go back to a platonic relationship. It had been too long that she pushed down her emotions around him. Once she recognized it was love, it felt easier to handle it but it had been tense between them. He was frustrated she didn’t believe and see the things he did while she was bound by science to facts and truths he didn’t accept.

Their relationship seemed to bridge the gap between them. Their friendship pushed them for more patience but their love and loyalty to each other solidified a person in their corner no matter what.

What did it say about Mulder that he just walked out on her in the restaurant? She half expected him to punch Jerrod in the face but he knew actions such as those wouldn’t help him get back to the X-Files.

Mulder’s priorities would always lie in his search for the truth about his sister, the abductions of women across the country and the conspiracy of a dark syndicate working against the public.

In the deafening silence of her apartment, she walked back to her living room and turned on the television to a black and white movie. Her sheets would smell like them and she couldn’t sleep there until she washed the scent off them.

“ _The course of true love…_ ” Margaret Lord began.

“ _Gather’s no moss_ ,” Macaulay Connor finished.

Scully wasn’t sure she could handle The Philadelphia Story right then. Maybe turning on a sports channel would be safer however it was too much of a reminder of Mulder. She settled on watching Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart bumble their way through their story.

She left the movie on while she changed into her pyjamas and brushed her teeth. She washed the makeup from her face and brought a quilt from her bedroom closet to sleep with on the couch. After she unplugged her phone and turned off her cell phone, she decided to nurse her loneliness with forced solitude. It was easier to handle what she could control.

  
****** **** ******

 

The morning was not a welcomed friend. After Scully had a light breakfast and a cup of coffee, she dressed in her running gear and hit the cold streets for much needed cardio therapy. She plugged her personal phone back in and ignored it ringing for her attention as she closed her apartment door behind her.

She could hear a man’s voice on the machine through her front door but she forced herself not to answer. No matter who it was, they could wait.

It wasn’t her style to face confrontation in a relationship head on. When things began to get messy with Daniel, she accepted the position with Quantico to train as an FBI Agent and to teach thereafter. When she and Jack began to have problems due to his inability to relax and he focused his negative attention on her, she told him to take the weekend alone and never called him again. Luckily, he transferred out of Quantico into Violent Crimes and she never had to smell his cologne in the staff lounge ever again.

With Mulder, he was the only person at the FBI that mattered to her. He was the one person she relied on to make it through the mundane and the banal of background checks as they suffered through their punishment. It was beneath her erudition as a medical doctor and a scientist to ask men with the smell of marijuana on their clothing that looked like members of Stills and Nash if they used such contraband while applying to be janitorial staff for a federal agency.

_Who cared as long as the toilets and floors were clean?_

When she returned to her apartment after six miles under her feet and sweat on her back, there was a blinking light on her answering machine and her cell phone had four missed calls.

_Beeeeeep!_

“ _Hi Dana, we’re doing catered lunch at Mom’s this afternoon. The boys wanted me to remind you that you promised to make a wreath with them._ ”

_Beeeeeeep!_

“ _Scully_ …” Mulder’s voice started and he sighed. “ _Call me back._ ”

Scully looked at the message and picked up her home phone as she contemplated her choices. She dialled the familiar number and waited as the phone rang.

“Mom? Yeah, I got Bill’s message. I’ll be over after my shower.”

Mulder could chill out a little longer.


End file.
